As the criteria ask you to pull apart and make explicit how your organisation works, it's always looking for processes, for what actually happens. Process management is the engine-room of the Baldrige scheme. Built into the category are questions about efficient and effective process management - effective design, an emphasis on prevention rather than cure, linkage to suppliers and partners, operational performance, cycle time, and evaluation and continuous improvement. Today, most businesses address productivity, cost, or quality issues in the context of a single department or project. For example, if the shipping department can't get all the products out the door on time, then another person is hired, or if confusion exists in the purchasing department, a new form gets created.
Process management delves deeper.
In the past it has been manufacturers, especially those selling in international markets, who have sought ISO certification. Their suppliers soon followed, notably in the raw materials, transportation and distribution industries. In 1979 the British Standards Institute submitted a proposal to ISO for a new set of international standards for quality assurance, and the first editions of the resulting ISO standards, 9000-9004, were published in 1987. Series ISO 9001 is the standard with the widest application, used where suppliers take responsibility for design, development, and the production, installation, and servicing of a product. For example, it defines minimum requirements for documented procedures and instructions for contract review, design and process control, internal inspection and testing.