Sysdine People Resource Management

Seeking Excellence

Sysdine's roots go back to 1987, when the competitive position of American business was under attack from foreign companies. Congress that year established the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which is the highest U.S. honor for management excellence. Each Spring, the President of the United States presents the Baldrige Award to its winners.

A Man for the Times

The award organizers invited David McClaskey, a noted quality engineer, to develop the initial Baldrige Examiner Preparation Course. In 1988, McClaskey became the world's first Baldrige trainer. He went on to develop the Baldrige scoring criteria and assessment procedures as well.

For his pioneering Baldrige work, McClaskey won an "Outstanding Service to the Nation" award from the United States Commerce Department. Over the years, he has provided Baldrige-based training to more than 3,000 managers. His experiences led him to a number of ideas for the improvement of business processes. He thus began assisting other companies in applying those ideas to their own operations.

Those efforts have proven to be no less than spectacularly successful. Ten percent of the Baldrige Awards to date have gone to organizations which McClaskey has assisted. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, for example, has won two Baldrige Awards with McClaskey's assistance.

Achieving Excellence

McClaskey and his team of Baldrige experts also worked with Pal's Sudden Service, a regional fast-food company. Pal's CEO Thom Crosby and his management group reorganized their company and its business processes around Baldrige principles.

Silver Creek Technologies, a software company founded in 1991, teamed with Pal's and McClaskey to place the key aspects of their processes into a software system. This system came to be called Sysdine.

The rest is history. As Convenience Store Decisions magazine noted, "The Sysdine People Resource Management software helped Pal's win a coveted Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award." QSR Magazine observed that "When Pal's Sudden Service won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the chain set a standard for the rest of the restaurant industry."

Pal's was the first, and to date the only, company in the restaurant industry to win the Baldrige Award. Its key performance measurements, such as growth, customer satisfaction, turnover, and service times, have far outpaced its industry. Crosby, like McClaskey, is now a noted expert on Baldrige-related management processes, and is in heavy demand as a speaker and consultant throughout the country.

And in December 2006, Pal's became the first and only two-time Excellence Level winner of the Tennessee State Quality Award. Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen noted that "Winners like Pal's Sudden Service demonstrate that business excellence is alive and well in our state... I applaud Pal's for its achievements, and I encourage all Tennessee organizations to model Pal's efforts to be the best."

Sysdine won the 2003 QSR Magazine Applied Technology Award, and the 2005 TechStar Award for the development of new technology. Sysdine is now used in industries as diverse as motion picture theatres, convenience stores, professional services firms, quick-serve restaurants, casual-dining restaurants, and full-service restaurants.