Increasing profit, quality products and services, agility, lower overhead, and operating costs are the key benchmarks vital to the performance and culture of successful firms.

Savvy managers should implement performance management rather than performance measures

Although sales of manufactured homes surged in the late 1990s because of a loosening of financing restrictions, the slowing economy has caused repossession rates to shoot up.

Pulte Homes of Minnesota has been a quality management star within a larger national organization that is increasingly focused on quality.

Twelve years ago, when 'Quality was Job 1' at Ford Motor Co. and many other Fortune 500 firms, only a handful of home builders were on the total quality management bandwagon.

Every History Maker Homes employee and every trade, supplier and consultant working for the company agree that while all of its recent innovations make History Maker a better company.

Consultant Scott Sedam played a major role in History Maker Homes' evolution into a fairly sophisticated practitioner of total quality management.

History Maker Homes began experimenting with customer satisfaction measurement in the early 1990s by employing a local marketing firm to do surveys.

For more information on the National Housing Quality Awards, view these resources.