Baldrige Award

The Baldrige Award—formally known as Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award—is an annual award designed to recognize quality management. It was created in 1987 and named after former Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige, who had died in a rodeo accident that year. Dur­ing the 1980s the United States was perceived as not hav­ing products that could compete in world markets. U.S. products, symbolized by U.S. automobiles, were consid­ered to be not “world class.” As Secretary of Commerce, Malcolm Baldrige had led efforts to improve quality and productivity in U.S. industries.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), part of the Department of Commerce, manages the Baldrige Award, criteria for which include

leadership STRATEGIC PLANNING

customer and market focus

information and analysis

human resource focus

process management

business results

Companies submit applications for the award and are evaluated by an independent Board of Examiners. Early recipients of the Baldrige Award have included Motorola Inc., Westinghouse Electric, Xerox, and Milliken & Co. Because of the public recognition associated with the Baldrige Award, some companies hire consultants and spend considerable sums attempting to win this symbol of quality. Winners often use the fact that their company won the award as part of their ADVERTISING efforts.

Winners are expected to share their organization’s per­formance strategies and methods. Some state and local organizations have also created Baldrige Award competi­tions. The award is in some ways similar to Japan’s Dem­ing Award, named after American statistician W. Edwards Deming, who led in the development of TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT (TQM) strategies in Japan during the 1950s and 1960s.