This article does not discuss the merits of the Baldrige Award. For such a discussion see GarvinD.A., “How the Baldrige Award Really Works.”Harvard Business Review (November/December 1991).
2.
The discussion in this article should be interpreted as one person's opinion and in no way as official doctrine of the Baldrige Award.
3.
The extent to which the production processes can be considered in-control depends on what technical definition of in-control is used. Experience suggests that many manufacturing processes that appear to be in-control using simple control charts fail to be in-control when more rigorous definitions of in-control are used such as those based on statistical models which take into account autocorrelation [e.g., see AlwanL.C.RobertsH.V., “Time-Series Modeling for Statistical Process Control,”Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 6 (1988): 87–95]. Many of the key manufacturing processes in the target group of very good companies are likely to fail the more rigorous definitions of in-control are used such as those based on statistical models which take into account autocorrelation [e.g., see AlwanL.C.RobertsH.V., “Time-Series Modeling for Statistical Process Control,”Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 6 (1988): 87–95]. Many of the key manufacturing processes in the target group of very good companies are likely to fail the more rigorous definitions of in-control. Nevertheless, the key processes in these companies generally are quite stable and capable, usually appearing to be in-control according to simple control charts.
4.
A QC Story is a team problem-solving process which, together with QC Tools, both guides team problem solving and serves as a format for documenting team improvement activities and analysis [see KumeH., Statistical Methods for Quality Improvement, The Association for Overseas Technical Scholarship, Tokyo (1985)]. The term QC Story is also used to refer specifically to the story-board formal Japanese QC Circles use to present the results of their improvement activities to management.
