Ceremony Marks 20th Year of Award and First Awards to Nonprofit Organizations WASHINGTON—Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez today presented five U.S. organizations with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest honor for organizational innovation and performance excellence. The ceremony—the 20th in the history of the award—honored the 2007 recipients and marked the first year that nonprofits were eligible to apply for the award. President Bush met with the winners informally to congratulate them at the White House earlier in the day.
“Quality, innovation, and competitiveness are essential to America’s global leadership,” said Gutierrez. “Each of the five recipients we honor here today has developed an innovative approach to performance excellence that benefits their organization, their community and our nation.” The 2007 Baldrige Award recipients included: PRO-TEC Coating Co., Leipsic, Ohio (small business); Mercy Health System, Janesville, Wisc. (health care); Sharp HealthCare, San Diego, Calif. (health care); City of Coral Springs, Coral Springs, Fla. (nonprofit); and the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC), Picatinny Arsenal, N.J. (nonprofit).
The recipients were selected from among 84 applicants. Their applications were reviewed over a six-month period, including an on-site visit by a team of volunteer experts. An independent board of examiners evaluated the applicants in seven areas: leadership; strategic planning; customer and market focus; measurement, analysis and knowledge management; human resource focus; process management; and results.
Over the past 20 years the Baldrige National Quality Program (BNQP) and the Baldrige Award have been extremely successful in promoting performance excellence across the country and around the world. Examples include: The Baldrige Award is managed by the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in conjunction with the private sector.
Further information on the Baldrige Award is available at www.baldrige.nist.gov.
As a non-regulatory agency, NIST promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce
