Transcript Sustainability: Challenge or opportunity? How can Baldrige help?

"Sustainability: Challenge or
opportunity? How can Baldrige
help?"
Mike Browder
Andy Czuchry
Agenda
• Just imagine if sustainability becomes an
overarching success factor for technology-driven
businesses in the global marketplace
• Performance Excellence could transform
compliance into an enhanced competitive
business advantage
• How can Baldrige help?
• A practical framework is suggested
• Continuous Improvement and Disruptive
Innovations are discussed
• A mini case study illustrates the process: BTES
• Takeaway: an exercise using the framework
How Can Baldrige Help?
• Organizational sustainability is measured
in terms of societal, environmental, and
financial impacts
• Baldrige could help:
– A Systems approach
– Standardize environmental measures
– Develop and standardize societal measures
• Could a pilot project be conducted with
an eighth category a la globalization?
An Innovative Approach May
Have Merit
• Systems Engineering and Optimal Control
Theory Suggests
• Optimal solutions tend to ride constraint
boundaries. Hence a compliance view may mask
other potential benefits.
• Innovations may be continuous or disruptive in
nature.
• A Conceptual Framework offered as a guide
for strategically evaluating alternatives
• The BTES Story illustrates the framework
BTES Continuous Improvement
• Organizational sustainability becomes an
overarching objective
– Customer (societal) considerations are:
Comfort, Convenience, Entertainment, &
Productivity
• A classic strategic planning process for each
of the pillars
– Compliance, Financial, Reliability, Safety, &
Service
• However when constraints are encountered
issues are placed in the “parking lot”
Conceptual Framework (1/2)
• Innovation often stymies Strategic Planning.
• “Ironically, process standardization can
undermine the very performance it’s meant to
optimize.”
• Introduce sustainability as a weighted
combination of financial, societal, and
environmental factors.
• Parking lot issues require an innovation process.
• The framework separates strategic planning into
two distinct processes: continuous improvement
and positive disruptive innovations.
Conceptual Framework (2/2)
• Parking lot and other disruptive innovations are
handled with a separate scenario planning process
• Idea generation becomes an artistic dimension with
business and technology issues harmonized
• Four steps include an iterative loop:
• Imagine new possibilities: Storytelling is a
powerful tool during this step
• Synthesize new models
• Analyze the potential sustainability payoff
• Conduct a Pilot Project to validate and refine your
business model before deploying system wide
Illustrating the Innovation Process
( The BTES Case)
• Three graduate students’ innovation in 2004
• The innovation created a non-linear step in
key processes and in the BTES business
model
• Connected over 10,000 customers to
broadband service
• Now profitable six years ahead of plan
The BTES Case:
Path Forward
• Smart grid technologies are new innovations
• A smart device both powers the optical
network terminal and reads the customer’s
meter and voltage
• Sends voltage and power usage data on
demand
• Sends power outage information immediately
• Also controls other devices using wireless
Benefits of the Conceptual
Framework
• Sustainability could become a strategic
competitive advantage.
• Business leaders might change their view of
compliance with regard to regulations.
• The sustainability challenge may become an
opportunity to enhance competitiveness.
• The Baldrige criteria could become a positive
influence.
A Sustainability Exercise for Your
Organization (1/2)
• What does sustainability mean to your
organization?
• Think of something that your organization
would like to implement but cannot due to
constraints
– Financial, Legal, Technological or other
limited resources
• Just imagine ways these constraints could be
relaxed
A Sustainability Exercise for Your
Organization (2/2)
• Pick a discontinuous change and Imagine
how your future organization would be
transformed
– Tell a story about your transformed
organization
• Sketch out a pilot project to refine your
strategy
• How would your balanced score card be rebalanced to measure results for this
innovation?
Summary
• Sustainability could become an overarching
success factor for technology-driven
businesses in the global marketplace
• The BTES case study suggests benefits from
positive disruptive innovations
• A framework was suggested to guide
organizations
• An exercise was started to explore
sustainability innovations in your organization
Conceptual Framework Details as
an Appendix
Figure 2: A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Sustainability Impacts
1. Strategic Plan
Start
•Continuous Improvements
•Discontinuous Changes
2. Deploy Action Plans
3. SIPOC Current Baseline
•Continuous Improvements
7. Introduce Sustainability Objective Function
•Financial
•Environmental
•Societal
4. Results
•Balanced Scorecard
6. Evaluate Improvement
Opportunities
5. Conduct Baldrige Assessment
•Major Strengths
•Major Opportunities for
Improvement
8. Deploy Action Plans
•Discontinuous Changes
9. Plan
11. Do
•Just Imagine
•Blue Sky System
•Business Innovations
•Forecast Sustainability
Outcomes
12. Check
•Commercialization
•Return on Investment
13. Act
•Pilot Projects
•Validate Assumptions
10. SIPOC Innovative Business Model
NOTE: This chart is from “Achieving Organizational Sustainability: An Engineering Management Challenge or Opportunity?” by Andy
Czuchry, Michael Parker and Robert Bridges. The paper was presented at the 2010 American Society for Engineering Education Annual
Conference and Exposition in Louisville, Kentucky in June 2010. It was also published in the Conference Proceedings.
Figure 1: Supplier, Input, Process, Output, Customer
Supplier
Input
Process
Output
Customer
Managerial Influence
NOTE: This chart is from “Achieving Organizational Sustainability: An Engineering Management Challenge or Opportunity?” by Andy
Czuchry, Michael Parker and Robert Bridges. The paper was presented at the 2010 American Society for Engineering Education Annual
Conference and Exposition in Louisville, Kentucky in June 2010. It was also published in the Conference Proceedings.
BTES
•Smart grid?
•Sustainability
(Ever Increasing Services Provided)
Discontinuous Change in the BTES SIPOC Model
Figure 4: Discontinuous Improvements in BTES Services
BTES
•Maintains 14,000
Water Heaters
•Broadband, TV,
Telephone
BTES Becomes
Bristol Tennessee
Essential Services
•Enters Broadband
Market
•Non-Linear Change
•Broadband Also
Benefits Electric
Systems
BTES is Bristol Tennessee Electric
System
1977
2005
TODAY
NOTE: This chart is from “Achieving Organizational Sustainability: An Engineering Management Challenge or Opportunity?” by Andy
Czuchry, Michael Parker and Robert Bridges. The paper was presented at the 2010 American Society for Engineering Education Annual
Conference and Exposition in Louisville, Kentucky in June 2010. It was also published in the Conference Proceedings.