Do organizations that have reached the excellence level in the Wisconsin Forward Award process benefit from an increase in bottom line results?

Abstract

Whether it be large corporations or small companies, all organizations have and always are looking for ways to improve. In the past, improvement meant simply concentrating on production and finding ways to make it faster, more efficient, cheaper and better. Since that time, there have been many changes in the way people think about what improvement really means to an organization. The present and future of continuous improvement for companies is for them to constantly concentrate on the quality of their many operating systems to maximize the efficiency of all the criteria that makes their organization successful. Today’s quality professionals from a wide range of organizations and industries use quality programs such as; Total Quality Management (TQM), the Malcom Baldrige National Quality Award program (MBNQA), the Wisconsin Forward Award program (WFA), and other state programs. All improvement programs have in common that if they are not proven to provide bottom line results, organizations will not use them. Many researchers over the past ten years have worked to show the relationship between quality programs and bottom line results. The quality programs that have most commonly been studied are Total Quality Management (TQM) and the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award program. This study is designed to show the relationship between Wisconsin’s version of the Baldrige Award, the Wisconsin Forward Award program, and bottom line results. In this research paper, the researcher will study the performance of organizations who have reached the highest level of performance in the Wisconsin Forward Award program. The results will be used to conclude whether or not their bottom line results have improved since implementing the WFA process.