The Quality Journey: 2how Winning the Baldridge Sparked the Remaking of IBM

In one of this year's top business books, Boyett ( Workplace 2000) and three senior IBM executives ask a complex question: Can IBM--a bureaucratic, tradition-bound and product-driven corporation with a defect rate ``slightly worse than the average American company''--reinvent itself, become market-driven and win the prestigious Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award? Though ponderous-looking, with detailed charts and appendixes, this volume offers insightful, human details about the daily pressures managers confronted in IBM's Rochester, Minn., facility after their failed 1989 Baldridge application signaled problems with leadership, customer feedback and teamwork. In response, Rochester's managers embraced a plan calling for near perfection in quality and reduction in the time cycle for meeting customer needs. The plan prompted IBM to launch its ``Market-Driven Quality'' program. In 1990 Rochester captured the Baldridge, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Commerce. The book ends in 1992, with IBM's steep setbacks and layoffs. In light of board chairman John Akers's recent departure and further layoffs, the jury is still out on whether IBM has really been ``reinvented.'' Still, this is a well-written, exciting study. (Oct.)