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.
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