Malcolm Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence Improvement Proposals (PDF)

In this economy, it is difficult to image a management team that is not deeply absorbed in business process engineering. After all, changing the profile of business is what good management is all about. As it does so, consciously or subconsciously, it executes a business engineering process, the products of which are changes in some or all of the business's organization, culture, processes, or technology. The effectiveness of the process is measured in term of changes in performance of the new business. Performance, in turn, is measured with metrics such as profitability, customer satisfaction, return on assets, growth, market share, and so on.

It is this business engineering process that interests us and that Enrique Suarez wants to address. Unique among all other business processes, this is the process by which management effects changes in business. We know there are many different forms of this process. Some forms are team based. Some are driven by strategic business planning. Some forms are based on continuous process improvement; others seek massive, quantum change. Some focus on business processes; others concentrate on organizational change. Some are based on management by objectives; some are intended to leverage information technology. Each business selects its own style and develops its business engineering process around that style.

By examining the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence and management practices in smaller firms and by providing recommendations to improve the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, the author believes he will engage a wider audience of business practitioners in studying in more depth what constitute real competitive advantage.