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Vice
President Dick Cheney and Commerce
Secretary Don Evans today
honored three organizations, including the first in health
care, with the 2002 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
in recognition of their performance excellence and quality
achievements.
The 2002
Baldrige Award recipients are: Motorola
Commercial, Government and Industrial Solutions Sector,
Schaumburg, Ill. (manufacturing); Branch-Smith
Printing Division, Fort Worth, Texas (small business);
and SSM
Health Care, St. Louis, Mo. (health care).
“With
a focus on continuous improvement, the Baldrige Award-winning
organizations have made excellence a part of their culture.
The recipients represent the best of American organizations,
and they are models for others to learn from and emulate,”
said Secretary Evans.
Accomplishments
of the three Baldrige Award winners include:
Motorola
CGISS: Employee productivity increased 32 percent
over 1999-2002. Over the past three years, overall customer
satisfaction and repurchase/recommend satisfaction levels
have exceeded 88 percent.
Branch-Smith
Printing: Experienced a 72 percent growth in sales
over four years and held that gain in 2002, when the industry
declined 6.6 percent. Grew its customer base from 91 in 1998
to 167 in 2002.
SSM
Health Care: Physicians connected to an automated
information system have increased steadily from 3,200 in 1999
to 7,288 in 2002. For four years, SSMHC has maintained an
“AA Credit Rating” attained by fewer than 1 percent
of U.S. hospitals.
The Baldrige
National Quality Program is a public-private partnership managed
by the Commerce Department’s
National Institute of Standards
and Technology (NIST). As a non-regulatory agency, NIST
develops and promotes measurement, standards, and technology
to enhance productivity, facilitate trade and improve the
quality of life.
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Background
The Malcolm Baldrige
National Quality Award was established in 1987 to improve
performance in U.S. organizations. Awards are made to organizations
that have substantially benefited the economic or social well-being
of the United States through improvements resulting in performance
excellence. Awards can be given in five categories: manufacturing,
service, small business, education and health care.
The application
process is rigorous and thorough. Applicants for the award
submit up to 50 pages of details showing processes, improvements
and results in seven areas, including leadership, customers
and markets, human resources and strategic planning. Each
applicant receives more than 400 hours of review by an independent
board of business, education and health care experts and a
detailed report citing strengths and opportunities for improvement.
Since 1988, 49 organizations have received the Baldrige Award.
The Baldrige Criteria
for Performance Excellence are used worldwide by thousands
of organizations to assess and improve their overall performance.
Since 1988, approximately 2 million copies of the Baldrige
Criteria for Performance Excellence have been distributed,
and wide-scale reproduction by companies and electronic access
add to that number significantly.
Each Baldrige Award
winner receives a Steuben crystal stela encasing a gold medallion
engraved with the Presidential seal and the words, “The
Quest for Excellence.” The award is named after Malcolm
Baldrige, Secretary of Commerce from 1981 until his death
in a rodeo accident in July 1987. Baldrige was a proponent
of quality as a key to this country’s prosperity and
long-term growth and helped draft the act establishing the
award program. The act was signed into law by President Reagan
in August 1987.
NIST manages the
Baldrige National Quality Program in conjunction with the
private sector.
Further
information on the Baldrige Award winners for 2002 and on
the Baldrige National Quality Program is available at www.baldrige.nist.gov.
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