Baldrige National Quality Program

In 1987, jumpstarting a small, slowly growing U.S. quality movement, Congress established the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program award. The purpose of the Baldrige National Quality Program award was not only to recognize U.S. companies and other organizations for their achievement, but also to promote quality awareness and to provide information on successful performance and competitiveness strategies. Baldrige National Quality Program award has become the nation's premier award for performance excellence and is widely credited as a major factor in helping U.S. businesses and other organizations become more competitive and higher performers. Barry Rogstad, president of the American Business Conference and a former chairman of the board of overseers for the Baldrige National Quality Program award, said "The Baldrige public/private partnership has accomplished more than any other program in revitalizing the American economy."

The Baldrige National Quality Program award is for overall organizational excellence, not for specific products or services. Three awards may be given annually to organizations in each of five categories: manufacturing; service; small business; education; and health care. In conjunction with the private sector, NIST developed and manages the award program. Let’s see why apply for this Baldrige National Quality Program award. According to Bob Barnett, Executive Vice President, Motorola, Inc: “We applied for the Award, not with the idea of winning, but with the goal of receiving the evaluation of the Baldrige Examiners. That evaluation was comprehensive, professional, and insightful...making it perhaps the most cost-effective, value-added business consultation available anywhere in the world today”.

Applying for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program award has been an effective way to accomplish these goals since 1988. Award applicants say the Baldrige evaluation process is one of the best, most cost-effective and comprehensive performance assessments you can get. They find high value in the process itself, whether or not they receive the Award.

Applying for the Baldrige National Quality Program award is an opportunity to examine your organization critically and identify strengths and opportunities to improve. Here are some of the key benefits of Baldrige National Quality award applicants have cited:

Accelerate your improvement efforts: The application process accelerates your improvement efforts by going beyond the internal self-assessment process and introducing a rigorous, objective, external view of your organization’s improvement process.

Energize your employees: Organizations that participate in the process tell us that pursuing this common goal increases team motivation and energizes improvement efforts.

Gain an outside perspective: A team of outside experts reviews each application. Each applicant receives a minimum of 200 hours of review; site-visited applicants receive over 1,000 hours of review.

Learn from the feedback process: Each applicant receives a thorough written assessment of its strengths and opportunities for improvement. See page 8 for more information on the feedback report.

Focus on results: The Baldrige National Quality scoring system allocates 450 out of 1,000 points to results—the bottom line in the Baldrige National Quality Program process. This results focus can help your organization determine its most critical performance measures and improve performance in key areas such as financial performance, customer satisfaction and loyalty, and process outcomes (e.g., student learning, health care outcomes, or product quality).