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The Baldrige Criteria For Performance Excellence And The International Standards Organization

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Introduction A lack of focus on innovation, quality and continual improvement causes many companies to falter. As forward thinking companies strive to maintain their competitiveness in the marketplace, various tools are available to assist in meeting customers’ needs. The focus of this paper is on two of these tools, the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence and the International Standards Organization’s (ISO) 9001:2015 set of quality standards. Each are deployed with somewhat different goals in mind, yet they are not contradictory to each other. In fact, they can even be used in conjunction with one another. In the following passages, readers will get a brief overview of both the Baldrige Criteria and the ISO 9001:2015 standards, the overall goals of each, and a description of the similarities and differences between the two. Although incorporating similar elements, the differences between the Baldrige Performance Criteria and the ISO 9001:2015 standards create the potential for greater satisfaction and continual improvement in organizations when used in combination with each other. General Comparison of Baldrige & ISO 9001:2015 Overseen by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Improvement Act of 1987 was developed with the goal to “stimulate American companies to improve quality and productivity to obtain a competitive edge in the global economy” (National Institute of Standards & Technology, 2016). Now

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