If you don’t invest in risk management, it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, it’s a risky business. - Gary Cohn, American Business Leader IBM
2020 taught us two distinct things: organizations are capable of adapting to monumental change, and identifying and eliminating risks must be a central focus for survival. A risk management plan does not need to be extensive and complex. It does, however, need to be approached with a proactive mindset rather than a reactive one.
Every quarter, around 100 IMEC clients have the chance to tell IMEC and our national partners terrific stories about the improvements made through their collaboration with IMEC in projects and events. Through a third-party administered survey, we ask clients to self-report accumulated impacts of cost savings, new investments, new or retained sales and new or retained employment from activities or projects completed with IMEC in the last year.
What does it take to build a truly remarkable team and a high performing organization? At the IMEC 2020 Conference on Enterprise Excellence, leaders in manufacturing, healthcare, education and business will come together to highlight best practices and strategies they use to achieve performance excellence. Despite representing different industries, these organizations have taken a similar path to performance excellence, and as such have overcome common challenges across industry. One challenge that is all too familiar to manufacturers is the workforce crisis. With the rise of the silver tsunami, manufacturers – and other industries – must take strategic actions to protect and build their greatest asset – their people.
Every year, IMEC hosts the Conference on Enterprise Excellence. During this one day of incredible learning, manufacturers, healthcare professionals, educators, and business leaders come together to share best practices in performance excellence that can be applied to any operation.
You may be wondering: “what can a manufacturer learn from a hospital or a school?” Well, a lot. Every organization has similar areas of focus – leadership, workforce, strategy, operations, customers, measurement and results, and technology implementation. Ensuring that these areas are held to high standards will result in a high performing organization. The 2020 conference features business leaders who have transformed their organizations into reputable, high performing ones by implementing trusted and effective strategies that are replicable for any industry.
IMEC announces five organizations as recipients of the IMEC Recognition Program’s 2019 Awards for Excellence. The high-performing organizations were evaluated against the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence by the IMEC Board of Examiners as part of the annual application process. Application scores and award determinations are made by the IMEC Panel of Judges.
As the country celebrates MFG Day 2019, and Illinois celebrates Manufacturing Month, it would be remiss of us to ignore this opportunity to acknowledge the impact of IMEC and the MEP National Network on our state and the country as a whole. Being a part of the Network, IMEC has access to a plethora of local and national resources designed to strengthen an organization’s competitiveness and position them on a path to excellence. As a result of leveraging partnerships and our team’s expertise, IMEC has been able to make a significant impact on clients and the economy as a whole. In 2018 alone, we assisted 763 Illinois companies, created 6,793 jobs, and contributed aggregate impact to the state’s economy was $620,444,392.
A couple of weeks ago, over 500 MEP center staff, partners, stakeholders, industry thought leaders, and NIST MEP staff gathered in Atlanta for the 2019 MEP National Summit. With the theme The United State of Manufacturing, this year’s summit intended to “lay the foundation for service and solutions that will grow the Network, improve the ways we serve small and medium-sized manufacturers, and strengthen and empower U.S. Manufacturers as we advance U.S. Manufacturing.”
Sure, you hear us talk about Baldrige and the Excellence Framework, but what is Baldrige?
The Baldrige Excellence Framework is a set of tools that organizations of all sizes in manufacturing, healthcare, government, non-profit, education and small business can use to gain an advantage over their competition. Focused on driving growth and sustainability by improving your organization’s performance, the Baldrige Excellence Framework includes the Criteria for Performance Excellence, core values and concepts, and guidelines for evaluating your processes and results. Organizations succeed with Baldrige because the Excellence Framework looks at the big picture from different perspectives:
Your organization leaders may start reviewing the criteria for achieving an award and see that it is quite overwhelming. This article is written to give you some insight into one very important piece of the criteria – Leadership and creating a successful organization.
