Measuring Maturity

摘要

Is your company world class? Lean, speedy techniques, a holistic viewpoint and moving from certification to assessment couid help it reap major rewards. In the mid '90S, A company called zeos assembled PCs in my home state of Minnesota. I was impressed when Zeos was named as a finalist for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, because competing for this honor is the equivalent of a software company trying to reach CMM Level 5. At the same time that Zeos was focusing on the Malcolm Baldrige Award, a similar company in Austin, Texas, named Dell Computer, was devoting all of its energy to two rather different objectives: Keeping inventory as low as possible, because it's the biggest risk in the PC assembly business, and delivering computers as quickly as possible after customers decide what they want. Dell couldn't possibly meet these goals unless it had the key Malcolm Baldrige capabilities (planning, execution, analysis and process management) in place, but the award wasn't its priority. On the other hand, to be a finalist, Zeos had to spend large amounts of executive and management attention on Malcolm Baldrige certification. Which of these two companies would you call the most mature?