8 Dimensions of Excellence

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• Create alignment between our values and those of our customers
• Balance our goal-setting and measures of success
• Separate strategic focus (areas 1, 2, 5 & 6) from operational concerns (areas 4, 8)
• Select the best products for improvement (areas 3, 7): those that create strong linkage between strategic and operational priorities

-- The Meaning of the 8 Dimensions of Excellence --

	1	Customer-Centered Priorities Customer desired outcomes These are their ultimate hopes: joy, security, personal time, belonging, health, etc. How well (and quickly) they get those results reveals our effectiveness. Health is an outcome that is a high customer priority. It should be measured. It is interesting to note that we often measure undesired outcomes like mortality (death) and morbidity (new ailments contracted by exposure to the health system). It is then easy to view the absence of those conditions as success. But are people healthy if they don't die or get sicker? If we don't know what results customers want to achieve by working with us, our long-term viability is merely chance.
	2	Undesired outcomes customers want to avoid or eliminate Death, taxes, discomfort, wasted time, frustration, sickness and a host of unwanted conditions.
	3	Product and service attributes customers want Ease-of-use, accessibility, low cost of ownership, durability and usefulness. Product refers to any deliverable we can make plural with an "s." The variety of products we provide and the characteristics of those products demonstrate our creativity and uniqueness. A good product is one that can be easily used by a customer to predictably create their desired outcome.
	4	Process experience customers want Timely arrival of product requested, no wait or cue time, ease of acquisition. Our aim is to address process performance in terms customers care about. This would include their time and cost (both expense and lost opportunity) to acquire the product and make it function easily and effectively. The number of people a customer must contact to solve a problem is a measure of success.

		Producer-Centered Priorities
	5	Producer desired outcomes Leadership, financial viability, market share, dominance, growth.
	6	Undesired outcomes producers want to avoid or eliminate waste, high turnover, financial loss, customer defection, instability.
	7	Product attributes producers want Easy to build, low cost to produce, no maintenance or warranty costs, easy to distribute.
	8	Process characteristics producers want process consistency, low variation, high productivity, comfortable lead times. It is important to distinguish our activity from the customer's. Measuring our production processes can guide us to improved efficiency. Our cycle time, unit cost, defect rate and waste can decline because we decided to measure them.