Introduction:
The NuGrain Laboratories Case Study is a fictional Baldrige Award application prepared for
use in the 2010 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Examiner Preparation Course. This case
study describes a fictitious government-owned, contractor- operated research laboratory. There is
no connection between the fictitious NuGrain Laboratories and any other organization, either
named NuGrain Laboratories or otherwise. Other organizations cited in the case study also are
fictitious, except for several national and government organizations. Because the primary purpose
of the case study is to provide learning opportunities for training Baldrige Examiners and others,
there are areas in the case study where Criteria requirements purposely are not addressed. While
this fictional application therefore may not demonstrate role-model responses in all Criteria areas,
it illustrates the format and general content of an Award application. This case study is based on
the 2009–2010 Criteria for Performance Excellence.
Case Analysis:
1. How did you select particular projects from the feedback report?
From this case, we suggest that NuGrain can do selection of particular projects from the feedback
report by:
By conducting a monthly review of action plan templates and scorecard.
Evaluating the organization’s performance review process.
Developing a 10-year workforce capability and capacity plan.
Select projects based on prior performance against goals.
Estimating the future performance and its progress of achieving the vision.
The Criteria are used to assess an organization's performance, helping the organization
identify its strengths, opportunities for improvement, and gaps/blind spots.
An assessment against the Baldrige Criteria has three elements:
o In the Organizational Profile, the organization describes what is important to it (its
operating environment, key relationships, competitive environment, and strategic
context).
o In responses to categories 1–7, the organization tells how it is accomplishing what is
important to it:
i. Category 1: Leadership
ii. Category 2: Strategic Planning
iii. Category 3: Customer and Market Focus
iv. Category 4: Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management
v. Category 5: Human Resource Focus
vi. Category 6: Process Management
vii. Category 7: Business Results
o The scoring guidelines allow the organization to assess how well it is accomplishing
what is important to it: the maturity of processes and their deployment, and the breadth
and significance of the organization’s results.
Individual categories or items of the Criteria are used as focused study for personal or
organizational learning.
Setting Priorities Using the Baldrige Criteria
Fransiskus Allan Gunawan – Arvi Nugraha – Paul Chemistra
5. Identify additional areas in quality deployment that are not being addressed. Conducting an
in-depth study of this type will naturally result in an understanding of areas that need to be
addressed that current quality approaches do not address. This is one of the major benefits of
validating quality systems. It will help close the gaps in quality deployment.
6. Develop signature strategy. Signature (or specially tailored) strategy contains the bundle of
quality improvement approaches that will help to achieve the outcomes that desire. It links
current states (givens) to desired states (shoulds) and clearly identifies methods for achieving
those results (hows). This is a statement that clearly identifies who you are, where you want to
go, and how you are going to get there for the entire organization. Your signature strategy is a
focused strategy that outlines a lean, well-defined, and well understood approach to
improvement of quality in services and processes. The signature strategy is a living document
that will change as products and the business realities change.
7. Develop a plan for implementation with time frames and costs. One of the important mantras
for any quality effort is to maintain the highest professionalism. Using a modern project
management approach, you should develop a project plan. This includes estimating tasks,
precedence relationships, time frames, and costs. Remember that expenditures for projects of
this type are nonlinear. Therefore, you should develop a budget on a monthly basis.
8. Implement the project plan. Get to work and implement your focused signature strategy. This
is where the fun begins. Remember the fundamentals of change management and political
change management when pursuing the project.
9. Repeat this on an annual basis. By performing this analysis annually, you will be able to
baseline your results and establish trends.
5. Was all of the feedback meaningful? What are some of the attributes of useful feedback?
According to team, the feedback provided by Balridge examiners demonstrates effective,
systematic, well-deployed approaches responsive to the overall requirements of most
Criteria Items.
The Examiner team provided comments on organization’s strengths and opportunities for
improvement relative to the Baldrige Criteria.
The feedback is not intended to be comprehensive or prescriptive. This feedback tell the
managers where Examiners think they have important strengths to celebrate and where
they think key improvement opportunities exist.
The feedback are not necessarily cover every requirement of the Criteria, nor will it say
specifically how manager should address these opportunities.
Meaningful: "Add content and precision to the management message," says Lipman. There’s
a time and place for backslapping—but not when giving effective feedback. Good feedback
gives meaningful and actionable suggestions of how to adjust a behavior or change course
and adds additional context that might have been originally missed.
Candid: Yes, giving feedback is difficult. But as Lipman says, "It’s all too easy to duck tough
issues when they emerge," and it helps no one. No matter what your response to a behavior
is, you need to be honest or else run the risk of losing the trust of your team.