Rigours behind Glamour

The IMC RBNQA Examination Process is rigorously structured in itself. Anshuman Tiwari who has been an senior examiner goes through the process.

It is often said that humans have a natural tendency to evaluate and judge others. What is never said but always experienced is that most of these evaluations and judgments vary. This is natural as every human has a brain of her/his own.

The IMC RBNQA Examination Process
Several leading companies apply with the hope of being amongst the winners of the IMC RBNQA each year. Many of these companies also apply with the intention of benefiting from the feedback report. The process is simple (at least on paper). Applicant companies submit a 75-page application in response to published and publicly available criteria.

Appointment of examiners
Each application is then allotted to a team of five examiners. A team leader is also appointed. These examiners have been trained through a five-day course and have the required background, experience and skill to examine an application. The applicant company is offered an opportunity to object to the appointment of an examiner on the team that will examine its application. This is done to ensure that no conflict of interest exists.

Individual examination
Five examiners devote over 40 man-hours each on studying the application in detail. They prepare an individual scorebook that includes strengths, areas for improvement, site visit issues and scores against each sub-category. These individual scorebooks are then shared with other members of the team.

Consensus
The team then meets to discuss the strengths, areas for improvement, site visit issues and scores against each sub-category in detail. The output of this intensive meeting, at times lasting for over 16 hours, is a consensus report and score sheet. This is the input for an Awards Panel meeting. The panel, based on the scoring, merits of the case and several other factors, decides on which applicants should get a site-visit.

Site visit
The examiner team visits the applicant site to verify and clarify their observations from the application. This is usually completed in three days. The examiner team then meets to finalize the feedback report by modifying the consensus report. This is the final report submitted to the applicant. The companies that did not get a site visit also get a feedback report.

A ward announcement
Based on the scores and feedback reports submitted by examiner teams, a distinguished panel of judges decides the winners. They also decide the certificate of merit and commendation certificate recipients.

Other International A ward Processes
The IMC RBNQA process is very similar to the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) process and European Quality A ward process. In fact the IMC RBNQA process improvement group (a group of five experienced examiners set-up to improve the examination process) benchmarks the MBNQA examination process. The Deming Prize process is different in terms of use of limited number of examiners. Moreover, the Deming Prize is non-competitive, i.e. more than one company can be awarded if it scores more than the required points.

Examiner benefits
The IMC RBNQA examination process is very demanding on the examiner’s time and skill. Each examiner invests over 150 man-hours in intensive intellectual activity. All this effort raises an examiner’s skills significantly. The examiner is exposed to wide-ranging criteria. He/she can then apply this learning to his/her own company. This is probably the most important motivator for companies to offer their senior employees as examiners. It also helps these companies understand how they should prepare their application and more importantly implement the IMC RBNQA criteria. Applicants also comment that the examination process is light years ahead of a self-assessment.

Applicant benefits
In informal feedback received from all applicants, they have highlighted the self-assessment process in writing the application, being exposed to intensive interviews with the examiner team and the quality of feedback report as the most important benefits of the process. A quick analysis of the winning companies indicates that they have gone from strength to strength subsequent to the IMC RBNQA experience. While it will be inappropriate to take credit for this success, the IMC RBNQA process can feel proud of its efforts.

The road ahead
The process improvement group has introduced an appraisal process for its examiners. This will include feedback from peer group, applicant and the IMC. This appraisal process will help the IMC delist examiners who do not perform to its expectations. This will also attract other professionals as the bar increases. There are plans to include MBA students as research associates for examiner teams. Our goal is to make the IMC RBNQA process the most respected examination process for awards worldwide.