What do you do when revenues rapidly decline, banking and financial institutions pull back, and there’s a national workforce decline? For many business owners, it’s as if lightning has struck their organizations’ industries not once, but twice.

For integrated manufacturing service provider KARLEE, the 2000 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient, part of its turnaround strategy included using the Baldrige Performance Excellence Criteria.

JoAnn Brumit, CEO of KARLEE, said that the organization’s performance excellence journey started in 1989, when a customer brought her the Baldrige Criteria. The customer said, “If I could build a company based on this, I would build a successful company,” she recalls.

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