Baldrige Framework for a Transport and Logistics Company Paper Example

Introduction

The Baldrige framework is an assessment tool used by companies in developing action plans for improvement. The assessment assists an organization to develop a detailed understanding of their capacity by focusing on seven critical aspects of managing including leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, knowledge management, operation focus, workforce focus, and results. The framework helps companies to identify and capitalize on their strengths. Also, an organization realizes its weaknesses and develop an action plan to address the shortcomings in the strive for excellence. During my part-time, I have been working in a transport and logistics firm that deals with the transportation of goods within the country and shipment from and to overseas. This report provides a Baldridge analysis of the firm, an explanation of the findings, an assessment of the company strengths and weaknesses as well as recommendations.

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The company capacity

A score of 10% on governance and leadership is due to the lack of clear organization goals since the vision to become the leading company in the transportation sector is too vague. Moreover, the organization lacks commitment to stimulating innovation, an instrumental component in maintaining sustainability. The poor performance on work process results from the company operating within a rigid plan and lack of the capacity to offer ad-hoc shipment services. The company score of 0.15 percent on corporate responsibility is due to the fact that the company social corporate responsibility involving a maximum of eight hours for all the workers on a working day is still in the early stages of implementation since most of the truck drivers are still working for up to ten hours when on long journeys. The company performs reasonably on the strategic planning scale due to the tendency of the management to have key performance measures that focus on results such as timely departure. The company has developed a feedback mechanism used by work teams to report challenges. Identified challenges so far include ineffective communication between marketers and the delivery department leading to taking excess client orders and the inability to offer convenient transportation. Implementation of corrective measures including networking with individual vehicle owners is underway.

A score of thirty percent on customer focus is attributable to the company measures to include a customer care department and the emphasis of a diverse workforce that meets the different client needs. A customer response program has improved customer engagement by allowing them to rate and give recommendations for their improved future experience. The company has put a tracking system in place that ensures real-time vehicle visibility thus preventing delays in departure time for planned journeys increasing the success of the work process. The company has taken necessary measures to provide a safe working environment by the Occupational Safety and Administration guidelines since the company orient new employees about the workplace hazards, and the company has alarms on vehicles that are put on during offloading to alert employees to keep away. The company adopted an approach of empowerment of all employees to improve their participation in the company activities. The implementation of the strategy is yet to be applied in the entire organization since actualization commenced with the skill-based training of the incoming employees.

Company Strengths

The company strengths include a visionary leadership team with an open mind to suggestions from both the customers and employers in improving the company processes. The company leadership focus on improving customer experience has contributed to the adoption of visions such as striving to ensure customer satisfaction and values including respect for diversity and integrity (Touminen, Vaso & Malmberg, 2013). Adopting customer-driven excellence makes the company committed to reducing defects during packaging and while goods are in transit. A customer care department reduces customer complaints, contributes to positive referrals and ultimately contributes to the sustainability of the company.

The company focuses on personal and organizational learning. The employee feedback mechanism has been instrumental in encouraging the sharing of knowledge thus leading to higher levels of corporate performance. The ability of the company to refine its approach through a series of improvements and evaluation encourages innovation and implementation of recommendations in the entire organization (Touminen, Vaso & Malmberg, 2013). Continuous monitoring of the arrival time and departure time against the planned schedule makes learning a part of daily work in the organization since employees get to learn from the previous mistakes.

The company focuses on measurable and attainable goals including maintenance of the set cost per kilometer, reducing the number of transportation disruptions and reducing accident incidences. Focusing on results ensure that the company strives to make value for stakeholders including partners, workforce, and customers. Setting clear and realistic goals to help track progress, and it guides change management. Annual assessments provide a snapshot of employees' contribution towards the organization goals, and it provides insights on the best candidates who may fill management positions (Touminen, Vaso & Malmberg, 2013). Moreover, an assessment of the level of workforce engagement reveals a limitation on employee capacity needs based training to teach the desired skill in employees.

Company weaknesses

The company suffers from limited flexibility making impossible to take advantage of unforeseen opportunities. The company utilizes a lot of manual labor limiting its ability to serve more customers at the same time leading to limited customer satisfaction. Importantly, there lacks a system of updating customers on the departure and arrival time of their commodities (Park, 2016). The company faces significant challenges in showing value for the workforce and undermines employee performance. The emphasis on job allocation by the management with limited consultancy with employees prevent workers from specializing in their preferred areas. Despite the company making some plans to reward employees based on their performance, the management has been reluctant to actualize the idea that is currently leading to the loss of employees trust on the administration.

Recommendations

The company should consider opening offices in critical terminals to reduce the time that it takes to handle transport problems. It would also be vital to adopt a client tracking system, especially for clients transporting large amounts of commodities to facilitate their ability to track goods on transit. The management should consider the use of market-based research to come up with a forecast of the transport volume (Park, 2016). Such a plan would prevent transport delays during the peak seasons, and the management would have a chance to increase the company capacity while the demand for transportation services is expected to be on the rise. Still, the company should consider automation of activities by considering the adoption of an electronic resource planning software to assist in the management of human resources, inventory, and purchasing.

Conclusion

To sum up, the company management is likely to lose opportunities for growth due to the failure to track the progress towards the achievement of company mission and strategies. Still, there is a risk to evaluate some areas and leave out others. The Baldrige assessment framework guards against such tendencies by encouraging organizations to conduct yearly evaluations. Importantly, following the framework gives a comprehensive view of the position of the company in achieving critical performance measures.

References

Park, G. (2016). Integral Operational Leadership: A relationally intelligent approach to sustained performance in the twenty-first century. Routledge.

Touminen, K., Vaso, J. & Malmberg, L. (2013). The Baldrige Criteria for Educational Institutions: Self-Assessment Work Book:37 Probing Questions and Contrasting Pairs of Examples: What Separates the Successful from the Average. Benchmarking Limited. Turku, Finland