Blogs

We have all heard of ‘they’ or ‘them’! You know, ‘they’ never give us enough material to do the job. ‘They’ didn’t leave it ready for us again. It was ‘them’ in (fill in the blank) department that delayed it. The problem is we refer to ‘them’ as though they were some completely isolated group from the organization we work in. While in fact ‘they’ are usually just another group of colleagues in our own department, in another department or an organization we partner with such as a supplier....

In this free book, leaders of Baldrige Award winning, World Class, organizations from all sectors share their success stories and eye-opening results from their organization’s journey to excellence. (This includes the small business sector.)

Why should you read Baldrige 20/20? Because you want your organization to survive and thrive as a respected organization today and as a respected organization in the year 2020, and because 20/20 hindsight is easy but 20/20 foresight is not....

There is nothing in homebuilding that makes less sense than purchasing by the square foot and it is a big obstacle in Lean implementation. Other than the fact that it makes things easy I suppose, there is very little to be said for it. It damn sure makes purchasing inaccurate and confusing, at best. Not much of a tradeoff. Imagine, for a moment, buying an automobile by the pound. Do you think you could do any meaningful price/value comparisons? Worse yet, you are the purchasing manager for...

This case study details the implementation of an extensive program of quality management at Wathen-Castanos, including training, the formation of Work Improvement Groups, benchmarking and the resulting impacts. It also discusses how quality was integrated to help support the building of green and energy efficient homes, all with limited resources. The NHQA criteria was used to coordinate and drive the improvement efforts.

Wathen-Castanos won the EVHA Builder of the Year in 2011, NHQA...