Answered Essay: how does the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award compare to the Deming Award? Which

Expert Answer

Comparing these two quality award programs, there are similarities in the criteria used for assessment of the award applications. Both of these programs use continuous improvement initiatives in order to retain their positions as quality system benchmarks as well as principles in global quality model formation. Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards (MBNQA) are administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and ASQ assists in the application review process.

NIST defined quality performance by developing a set of core principles for the quality management such as leadership, customer driven quality, continuous improvement, satisfaction, design quality and prevention, employee satisfaction, future planning, corporate responsibility and good corporate citizenship. These core principles make the framework for performance excellence, which make the criteria for MBNQA. The application assessment criteria is divided into seven categories, which are leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, human resource focus, process management, information and analysis, and business results. This entire framework supports the customer and market focused strategic action plans. The quality model is supposed by information and analysis. MBNQA objective is to provide a model for understanding and improvement of quality management through continual improvement of the award criteria.

Deming prize, on the other hand, does not provide any framework for assessment criteria. The evaluation is based on 10 points with equal weightage. These 10 points are organization, human resources, quality resources, information, standardization, improvement, maintenance, effects of quality systems and future plans. Performance against each of these 10 points is assessed by the members of the expert panel.

The similarity between the two award programs is that the categories of evaluation criteria emphasize similar values. However, the difference is that Deming prize quality model does not provide a particular framework or model.