Story update 4/24/2014: We bumped up the cost of accreditation based on comments that the original article was on the low side. We also added references to ILAC as well as additional accreditation bodies that operate in the United States (ACLASS, NVLAP, L.A.B.)

On April 6, 2014, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker presented two U.S. organizations with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest honor for organizational innovation and performance excellence.

Why should an organization integrate lean methodology with the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence? And how should it go about doing that?

In part one of this series I described how many auditors want your quality manual to repeat what is in ISO 9001, API Spec Q1,

When we learn the ways of lean methodology, we’re taught that there are two types of waste: pure waste, which needs to be eliminated; and necessary waste, which does nothing to improve our performance or profits but must be produced anyway.

And so the debate rages on about whether the wildly popular Flappy Bird app is actually a tool for teaching lean or teaching theory of constraints. Really? No, not really. But at least I’m not the only one thinking about it.