2010 Vietnam National Quality Awards

Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung announced that 96 Vietnamese organizations received National Quality Awards this year, 11 at the Golden level and 85 at the Silver level.

Having just served as an examiner for the Arizona Excellence Award this year (and for the Hawaii award in the past), I know the level of commitment that it takes to earn recognition in these programs. Congratulations to all the award winners and all participants.

I could only find this one announcement, or press release, with no information on the winners. Maybe later, as the award ceremony will be held at a later date. Here's two links to the same article, this one without a picture, this one with a picture (just in case having a picture with your text matters to you).

I've read articles that quote various numbers for how many countries have National Performance Excellence or National Quality Awards. They say things like "over 85 countries" or "over 120 countries". So I started to wonder just what countries, exactly, do actually have active programs. I started to put together a list, but haven't finished it yet. The most accurate starting point I was able to find is at the NIST website, home of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (that's the U.S. national program). But I've found that the list is either out of date or incomplete.

It is interesting, though, to see the list of countries that have programs, many that I would not have thought of. Narrow mindedness on my part, I guess. When I get my list done I'll share it here or on my website.

If you are not familiar with the Criteria for Performance Excellence, you should definitely take the time to look at it. Even just reading the Criteria and being aware of the requirements will help you look at your organization differently, and lead to improvements.

My Conference Gem

I found my gem at the conference on the last day, at the last session. It was a Friday afternoon, after two days of conference and two days of pre-conference courses. Which means that by then the attendance at the sessions had thinned out considerably. And that’s too bad. I had given my second presentation at the next to last session on Friday, and had a pretty good crowd, but I know a lot of people were already heading to the airport. By the last session people were pretty sparse. I was a bit worn out after giving my two presentations and not having much sleep (which was odd, because I almost always sleep well), and wasn’t planning on going to any of the last sessions myself. None of the sessions looked interesting enough to draw me in, but I decided to go to one anyway. I picked one that was a little different for me, a session about a school district in Texas.

And that’s where I found my gem.

When I got to the room where the session was being held, there was only one other person there. Two more came in, but the first person left, so there were only three of us in attendance. A gentleman from the Aldine Independent School District in east Texas, around Houston, talked about how the performance of the schools in their district made a dramatic turnaround. It was truly fascinating and impressive. In 1993 the school district was in extremely poor shape in terms of performance, and they realized they were in severe crisis and had to do something. At that time they were introduced to the Baldrige Criteria, also known as the Criteria for Performance Excellence. They decided to use the criteria to improve their schools and their performance. And, boy, have they ever. From being at the bottom in 1993, to being an award winning district in 2004 through today, they have made incredible gains.

That in itself is impressive, but how they made the turnaround is a wonderful story. Given that over 80 % of the households in the district are “economically challenged” and near the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, makes their results even more impressive. How did they make their improvement? By using the Baldrige Criteria and with a lot of hard work. The Baldrige Criteria itself is just a framework. It doesn’t tell you how to do anything, it just provides criteria that must be addressed if you want to achieve excellence. How you actually address those criteria is up to you. This school district did things like develop an effective communication system district-wide so that everyone knows what’s going on, implemented a peer review system that brought teams from one school to another school for evaluation, which also contributed to greater understanding an learning by the evaluators, and a system for providing structured help to poorer performers that allows them to improve faster.

This little gem of a presentation showed that the tools for improvement, for performance excellence, are there. You just have to use them, and have the will to make them work. That’s where the first criteria, Leadership, comes into play. Leadership provides the will to succeed. If leaders provide the will, you’ll find the way.

In the Land of Mickey

I’m in Orlando, the land of Mickey Mouse. I won’t see him though; I’ve been attending the ASQ Quality Management Division Conference. It was quite excellent. It’s a relatively small conference, about 600 people, but that was a good size. It provided great opportunities to meet people and have a conversation with them. I met some wonderful people, very pleasant to speak with, and interesting. You get a wide variety of people at conferences, meaning a wide variety of occupations and jobs. Even at a conference on quality management there were people from many different industries and jobs. I met people from NASA, Pratt & Whitney (the aircraft engine manufacturer), the University of Texas Cancer Center, a steel company (Gerdau Ameristeel), the US Army Corps of Engineers, a couple of consultants, a school district in Texas (Aldine Independent School District), and a student. And that’s just the people I both had a conversation with and got their business card.

I enjoy meeting new people, but this isn’t something I could do just a few years ago. I’m basically pretty shy, and never used to be able to just walk up to someone at a conference or meeting and start a conversation. That is, until I started hanging out with Frank and Ken. They’re amazing, how easily they meet people and start a conversation with them. Especially Frank. He can walk into a room and within five minutes get to know half the people like he’s known them for twenty years. So I started watching them to see how they did it, and started practicing. I found that all it really takes is just to say “hi” to someone. So that’s what I do, I just say hi to whoever I’m sitting next to or standing next to. It sure beats spending the whole conference watching everybody else talking and having a great time. Try it next you go someplace where you don’t know anyone.

I came to this conference to give two presentations, which I did. Why two? Because in the call for papers it said you could submit a maximum of two, and if you submit two, the odds of getting accepted are better. So I submitted two, and both were selected. The worst they could do is say no, right? So why not ask? I thought they went well, and since at least a few people came to both, they must have been pretty good. It feels good when someone comes up to you after your presentation and tells you they got a great gem that they were missing and are going to take it back to work with them and put it into practice. For at least one gentleman it was the methodology that I presented (and is in my book, The Small Manufacturer’s Toolkit) for selecting “the right tool for the job.” Several people got their gem from my Strategic Planning session; and that methodology for selecting the right tool for the job always turns on the light bulb for some people.

In my next post I’ll tell you where I found my gem at the conference.

I'm fussy

Just a few things I'm fussy about:

Espresso - You can't get a good espresso in Hawaii. Even the new place that made such a big deal about their machine that's the only one on the island; blah. I haven't been to Italy, so can't comment about espresso there, so my Gold Standard is The Steps of Rome Cafe in San Francisco. Excellent!

Coffee - Not as fussy as about espresso, but still have high standards. I use a French Press at home. 'Nuff said.

Margaritas - I can't drink margaritas anymore, except for the ones I make. Souza Commemerativo tequila, Contreau, fresh squeezed limes. On the rocks. No slushies for me.

Beer - I could go on for hours about this one. I have to have high-quality. Micro brews, assorted imports, and traveling to England, Wales, and Scotland for pub brews. Haven't been to Germany or Belgium yet.

Cotton shirts - Has to be 100% cotton. Same for undies.

Customer Service - I expect nothing but excellence. I'm usually disappointed.

Efficiency - I can't stand things that don't work well.

Another China Toy Recall

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifAnother made in China. When will it end? And why is it happening in the first place? There's a lot of talk about increasing inspections, as we hear with the issues surrounding tainted food and pet food. But, for the 1,000,000th time, you can't inspect quality into a product. You can weed out a select few items that are bad, or don't meet standards or specifications, but that's not the solution to the problem. The companies that are importing the products blame the manufacturers. That's certainly no solution either.

What's needed is a comprehensive management plan that includes detailed specifications for all products. That may include chemicals and additives that are allowed and those that are not. The importers, also known as customers to the manufacturers, need to work more closely with their suppliers. Create partnerships, not necessarily financial partnerships, but working relations partnerships. If necessary, work with the suppliers to develop modern and sophisticated management systems, that include dynamic and reliable quality management systems. The big boys, like WalMart, Target, and others have a lot of influence. Don't try to muscle or threaten your suppliers, but work with them for mutual benefit. Many Chinese manufacturers are very sophisticated and have management employees with Western management education and training. Use that talent, support it, and enhance it. Send some people over to your suppliers to develop, in concert, the types of systems that are needed to prevent problems from entering the supply chain, not to try to inspect them out at the end of the chain.