How do your teams rate on Baldrige criteria?
How do your teams rate on Baldrige criteria?
The following guidelines will be used to judge the 1998 regional Baldrige competition sponsored by Quality Valley USA in Schnecksville, PA. As a quality improvement tool, it can't be beat, says Sharon Donahue Hellwig, EdD, RN, director of quality improvement at Easton (PA) Hospital.
She explains, "A team project assessment like this one forces you to talk to departments you've never talked to, and it leads to improvements you wouldn't expect. It keeps you focused on the idea of Who is your customer?"
Hellwig adds that you don't even have to enter a competition to realize the benefits of using Baldrige-based guidelines. How about using them as a road map to plan or evaluate your next quality improvement project?
1. Selection of project/process area.
Describe how and why your team selected this project/process area for improvement.
2. Understanding existing condition.
Describe the relationship of your project to your goals for improvement, and describe current process performance. Areas to address:
· Customer's requirements
· Support for organizational goals
· Team analytical tools and techniques
· Measures of present conditions
3. Analysis.
Describe how the problem was analyzed. Areas to address:
· Identification and verification of the root cause(s) of the problem
· Measurements and data collection
4. Implementation.
Describe your implementation of the solution. Areas to address:
· List solutions you examined
· Reasons for selection of solution
· What was done?
· How did you do it?
5. Results.
Demonstrate that an improvement has occurred as a result of the project/process area implementation. Areas to address:
· Elimination of root cause(s)
· Intangible changes or benefits from the project and how they affect all customer(s)
· Measure(s) that show the "before project" and "after project implementation" data
· Comparisons with organizations inside or outside your industry (benchmarking)
6. Standardization and prevention.
Describe team efforts to develop the best, easiest, and safest ways to prevent problems addressed by the project. Areas to address:
· Team technique used in selection
· Guidelines established for measuring performance of the process or tasks
· Efforts made to develop objective, simple and visible procedures and methods, e.g., fail safing, irreversible improvement, etc.
· Preservation and dissemination of the information about the team project
7. Learning.
Describe what the team learned and how they used those lessons to continuously improve the success of other teams or activity in the company. Areas to address:
· Potential obstacles that would impede the progress of other teams
· Problems or issues that might be organization wide and should be addressed by another team
· General reflections on the positive aspects of team problem solving activity
· Methods of expanding or deploying the team's learnings
(Editor's note: The preceding information was provided by Quality Valley USA, c/o Lehigh Carbon Community College, Schnecksville, PA.)
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