Branch-Smith, Inc. Is a fourth-generation printing family business in Fort Worth, TX, whose founder was Aaron Smith. He was actually born with no arms but amazingly trained himself to write and type with his own toes. In 2002 the company received the Baldrige award and its strategic plan towards achieving such a prestigious prize was characterized by its systematic strategic planning process, which bred performance excellence results integrated into the plan (Evans, 2016). The company has been mentioned to have employed up to seventy employees at the time of the award, with a wide range of turnkey services to its customers with specialization in printing related business such as designing, printing, mailing and binding services. This paper provides an analysis of the strategic planning at the company, with a detailed evaluation of the unique features associated with their strategic planning, as well as identifying a situation that I had to plan for the organization that I work for.
Analysis of the Strategic Plan
In 1992, the company’s president David Branch who had married Smith’s Daughter realized the need and desire to streamline culture form repeatable operations to an integrated approach that involved regular evaluation and improvement across the divide. He saw the need to focus on process rather than activities, and a proactive approach to problems rather than reactive (Hensmans, Johnson, & Yip, 2017). The concerns on quality drove the company’s strategic move to form a quality plan that motivated the president to join a small business executive meeting with intensive twenty-four-month training on quality. This resulted in the implementation of quality management and problem-solving techniques. In 1994, the company adopted a self-assessment Baldrige technique that was the beginning of a revolution in the way business was to be done. This drove the company into a systematic documentation phase for its purposed innovative excellence system, where the focus was on building, sharing and applying information to empower the organization employees in the way they were to do business processes (National Institute of Standards and Technology (U.S.), & American Society for Quality, 2018). By 19996, the company had already registered for the ISO 9001 standard and was the first printing company to register with the standard. Later an assessment of the company by the Baldrige based external assessment was conducted and the company learnt that its feedback report would only be strong when applying the measures from it (Evans, 2016).
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The presidents’ further efforts to enrol in the Texas State Quality Award enlightened him about having aligned goals and site visits, hence making the company fully embrace an aligned approach phase of its journey to innovative excellence. Further utilization of a quality information database was considered, which contained customer complaints, internal nonconformance, supplier failures, and progress of departments towards their respective goals (Hensmans, Johnson, & Yip, 2017). In 1999, the company won its first award, with the Texas State Quality, its continued focus on leadership accountability, strategic plans, management reviews, performance charts, and a comparison of action plans to the company’s key measurements (National Institute of Standards and Technology (U.S.), & American Society for Quality, 2018). Stakeholder’s playing their role in the company’s vision, coupled with the coordinated improvement in technology, information systems, HR and equipment needs drove the integrated approach for quality improvement journey that made it win the coveted award in 2002 (Evans, 2016).
Unique Features Associated To Their Strategic Planning
The following unique features helped the business gain a prestigious status. First, Branch-Smith’s leadership always worked as a team, which enabled the company to adopt an adaptable approach to change, with clear guidance and support to its employees. The idea was to align the company’s purpose and focus towards the overall corporate direction, with the inculcation of the corporates value statement as a culture (Evans, 2016). This ensured a focus on the needs of its clients, and all the involved stakeholders, thus the foundation of the mission statement. Second, The Company’s customer and market focus resulted in a CSR system that was concerned with the daily contacts of the customers to basically create and maintain an excellent customer relationship.
The focus on the specific niche requirements, with vertical integrated value-added services, has resulted into reduced cycle times, lower costs and on-time delivery have all been important components to ensure customer attraction and retention (Hensmans, Johnson, & Yip, 2017). Third, its data-driven analysis technique has come in handy, where the business gathers information to help provide excellent customer service at the lowest possible costs. The software captures shop floor data throughout the day, indicating time and material needed estimations which help design electronic job plans that manage workflow. Fourth, employees form an important cog in the success of an organization, thus the company determines employee satisfaction through its annual surveys, which address communication, customer focus, job responsibility, and training among others for teamwork and overall satisfaction (National Institute of Standards and Technology (U.S.), & American Society for Quality, 2018). Lastly, the company’s commitment to performance has been attributed to its processes complying with procedures and documentation available. The focus on quality and meeting customer needs with continuous improvement, thus making it become a partner of choice among its customers.
Situations in Which I Had To Strategically Plan in My Organization
In the onset of 2003, I was lucky to join Motawi Tileworks, a business inspired by its founder Nawal Motawi who studied ceramics at the University of Michigan. At the time we were only eighteen employees. Her focus on a revolutionary way of doing business while focusing on both customer and employee satisfaction prompted us to think in a strategic way of doing our business operations. First, the application of Toyota-style of lean manufacturing became our core driving force to do business. So that we would only make tiles that were needed by the customers through careful analysis of their demands, rather than making a large number of tiles and keeping large amounts of half-finished inventory on hand, that proved to be a challenge for this business that was committed to making a variety of products.
References
Evans, J. R., (2016). Managing for quality and performance excellence . Mason, OH: Thomson/South-Western.
Hensmans, M., Johnson, G., & Yip, G. S. (2017). Strategic transformation: Changing while winning . Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
National Institute of Standards and Technology (U.S.), & American Society for Quality. (2018). Baldrige 20/20: An executive's guide to the criteria for performance excellence . Gaithersburg, MD: Baldridge Performance Excellence Program, National Institute of Standards and Technology.
