The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award was created by Public Law 100-107, signed into law on August 20, 1987. The Award Program, responsive to the purposes of Public Law 100-107, led to the creation of a new public-private partnership. Principal support for the program comes from the Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, established in 1988.
The Award is named for Malcolm Baldrige, who served as Secretary of Commerce from 1981 until his tragic death in a rodeo accident in 1987. His managerial excellence contributed to long-term improvement in efficiency and effectiveness of government. The Findings and Purposes Section of Public Law 100-107 states that:"
| 1. | the leadership of the United States in product and process quality has been challenged strongly (and sometimes successfully) by foreign competition, and our Nation's productivity growth has improved less than our competitors' over the last two decades. |
| 2. | American business and industry are beginning to understand that poor quality costs companies as much as 20 percent of sales revenues nationally and that improved quality of goods and services goes hand in hand with improved productivity, lower costs, and increased profitability. |
| 3. | strategic planning for quality and quality improvement programs, through a commitment to excellence in manufacturing and services, are becoming more and more essential to the well-being of our Nation's economy and our ability to compete effectively in the global marketplace. |
| 4. | improved management understanding of the factory floor, worker involvement in quality, and greater emphasis on statistical process control can lead to dramatic improvements in the cost and quality of manufactured products. |
| 5. | the concept of quality improvement is directly applicable to small companies as well as large, to service industries as well as manufacturing, and to the public sector as well as private enterprise. |
| 6. | in order to be successful, quality improvement programs must be management-led and customer-oriented, and this may require fundamental changes in the way companies and agencies do business. |
| 7. | several major industrial nations have successfully coupled rigorous private-sector quality audits with national awards giving special recognition to those enterprises the audits identify as the very best; and |
| 8. | a national quality award program of this kind in the United States would help improve quality and productivity by: |
| a. | helping to stimulate American companies to improve quality and productivity for the pride of recognition while obtaining a competitive edge through increased profits; | |
| b. | recognizing the achievements of those companies that improve the quality of their goods and services and providing an example to others; | |
| c. | establishing guidelines and criteria that can be used by business, industrial, governmental, and other organizations in evaluating their own quality improvement efforts; and | |
| d. | providing specific guidance for other American organizations that wish to learn how to manage for high quality by making available detailed information on how winning organizations were able to change their cultures and achieve eminence." |
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Baldrige Process News
November 25, 2003
President and Commerce Secretary Announce Recipients of Nation’s Highest Honor in Quality and Performance Excellence
President George W. Bush and Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans today announced seven organizations as recipients of the 2003 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest honor for quality and performance excellence. This is the most Baldrige Award recipients since the program started in 1988 and the first time that recipients were named in all five Baldrige Award categories.
The 2003 Baldrige Award recipients are:
For a complete description of these role model organizations, view the official press release. Did you know that every year about 400 people from almost every state; from businesses, schools, hospitals, other health care organizations, and government volunteer days and weeks of their time to evaluate Baldrige Award applicants? Take a look at the current Board of Examiners list. Judges' Meeting September 18, 2003 Judges' Meeting July 31, 2003 |
Frequently Asked Questions about the
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
Who was Malcolm Baldrige?
Malcolm Baldrige was Secretary of Commerce from 1981 until his death in a rodeo accident in July 1987. Baldrige was a proponent of quality management as a key to this country’s prosperity and long-term strength. He took a personal interest in the quality improvement act that was eventually named after him and helped draft one of the early versions. In recognition of his contributions, Congress named the award in his honor.
What is the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award?
The Baldrige Award is given by the President of the United States to businesses—manufacturing and service, small and large—and to education and health care organizations that apply and are judged to be outstanding in seven areas: leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, information and analysis, human resource focus, process management, and business results.
Congress established the award program in 1987 to recognize U.S. organizations for their achievements in quality and performance and to raise awareness about the importance of quality and performance excellence as a competitive edge. The award is not given for specific products or services. Three awards may be given annually in each of these categories: manufacturing, service, small business and, starting in 1999, education and health care.
While the Baldrige Award and the Baldrige recipients are the very visible centerpiece of the U.S. quality movement, a broader national quality program has evolved around the award and its criteria. A report, Building on Baldrige: American Quality for the 21st Century, by the private Council on Competitiveness, said, “More than any other program, the Baldrige Quality Award is responsible for making quality a national priority and disseminating best practices across the United States.”
The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) manages the Baldrige National Quality Program in close cooperation with the private sector.
Why was the award established?
In the early and mid-1980s, many industry and government leaders saw that a renewed emphasis on quality was no longer an option for American companies but a necessity for doing business in an ever expanding, and more demanding, competitive world market. But many American businesses either did not believe quality mattered for them or did not know where to begin. The Baldrige Award was envisioned as a standard of excellence that would help U.S. organizations achieve world-class quality.
How is the Baldrige Award achieving its goals?
The criteria for the Baldrige Award have played a major role in achieving the goals established by Congress. They now are accepted widely, not only in the United States but also around the world, as the standard for performance excellence. The criteria are designed to help organizations enhance their competitiveness by focusing on two goals: delivering ever improving value to customers and improving overall organizational performance.
The award program has proven to be a remarkably successful government and private-sector team effort. The annual government investment of about $5 million is leveraged by a contribution of over $100 million from private-sector and state and local organizations, including $10 million raised by private industry to help launch the program and the time and efforts of hundreds of largely private-sector volunteers.
The cooperative nature of this joint government/private-sector team is perhaps best captured by the award’s Board of Examiners. Each year, more than 300 experts from industry, educational institutions, governments at all levels, and non-profit organizations volunteer many hours reviewing applications for the award, conducting site visits, and providing each applicant with an extensive feedback report citing strengths and opportunities to improve. In addition, board members have given thousands of presentations on quality management, performance improvement, and the Baldrige Award.
The Baldrige Award winners also have taken seriously their charge to be quality advocates. Their efforts to educate and inform other companies and organizations on the benefits of using the Baldrige Award framework and criteria have far exceeded expectations. To date, the recipients have given more than 30,000 presentations reaching thousands of organizations.
What are the Baldrige criteria?
The Baldrige performance excellence criteria are a framework that any organization can use to improve overall performance. Seven categories make up the award criteria:
Leadership —Examines how senior executives guide the organization and how the organization addresses its responsibilities to the public and practices good citizenship.
Strategic planning —Examines how the organization sets strategic directions and how it determines key action plans.
Customer and market focus —Examines how the organization determines requirements and expectations of customers and markets; builds relationships with customers; and acquires, satisfies, and retains customers.
Measurement, analysis, and knowledge management —Examines the management, effective use, analysis, and improvement of data and information to support key organization processes and the organization’s performance management system.
Human resource focus —Examines how the organization enables its workforce to develop its full potential and how the workforce is aligned with the organization’s objectives.
Process management —Examines aspects of how key production/delivery and support processes are designed, managed, and improved.
Business results —Examines the organization’s performance and improvement in its key business areas: customer satisfaction, financial and marketplace performance, human resources, supplier and partner performance, operational performance, and governance and social responsibility. The category also examines how the organization performs relative to competitors.
The criteria are used by thousands of organizations of all kinds for self-assessment and training and as a tool to develop performance and business processes. Several million copies have been distributed since the first edition in 1988, and heavy reproduction and electronic access multiply that number many times.
For many organizations, using the criteria results in better employee relations, higher productivity, greater customer satisfaction, increased market share, and improved profitability. According to a report by the Conference Board, a business membership organization, “A majority of large U.S. firms have used the criteria of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for self-improvement, and the evidence suggests a long-term link between use of the Baldrige criteria and improved business performance.”