Abstract

Customer-supplier relationships, continuous process improvement, interpersonal skills, and teamwork are keys for those who plan to work in quality organizations. These are among the survey findings from seven 1988-1994 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award winners. New college graduates should be customer focused, process and improvement oriented, and skilled in teamwork. Their attitude toward quality is more important than their experience with tools and techniques. For example, among 60 concepts and skills evaluated by the respondents, the top ranked three were interpersonal skills, team process/member effectiveness, and customer-driven quality, while the lowest ranked items were quality auditing, the Taguchi loss function, and Juran's quality trilogy. Internal training provided by the respondents emphasize the same concepts and skills that they would require of entry-level college graduates, suggesting that colleges are not teaching these concepts and skills adequately. Training methods by the respondents focus on interaction and collaboration, using such techniques as team-based projects, games, experiments, and role playing. Some companies are moving away from basic TQM (total quality management) training courses, on the expectation that workers have acquired this information on the job.