BALDRIGE 

An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for 

2O 2O 

Performance Excellence 

With Forewords by 

Rosabeth Moss Kanter 

and Gregory R. Page 

F

T

Featuring Data and Stories from Organizations 

That Used the Criteria to Become U.S. Role Models
Baldrige Performance Excellence Program 

National Institute of Standards and Technology 

U.S. Department of Commerce 

100 Bureau Drive, Stop 1020 

Gaithersburg, MD 20899-1020 

Telephone: (301) 975-2036 • Fax: (301) 948-3716 

E-Mail: baldrige@nist.gov • Web Site: http://www.nist.gov/baldrige 

Printed in August 2011 in the United States of America 

Lead author: Christine Schaefer; lead editor: Dawn Bailey. The following staff 

members of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program also contributed to 

this publication: Marilyn Barstow, Jacqueline Calhoun, Ellen Garshick, Millie 

Glick, Harry Hertz, Scott Kurtz, and Jeff Lucas. Book design and illustrations by 

Capitol Communication Systems, Inc., Crofton, MD 

The Baldrige Program gratefully acknowledges the Baldrige Award winners 

whose stories, figures/data, and photos appear in this book: AtlantiCare; Boeing 

Mobility; Cargill Corn Milling; City of Coral Springs; DM Petroleum Operations 

Company; Freese and Nichols Inc.; Heartland Health; Honeywell Federal 

Manufacturing and Technologies, L.L.C.; Iredell-Statesville Schools; MEDRAD, 

Inc.; Mercy Health System; MESA Products, Inc.; MidwayUSA; Montgomery 

County Public Schools; Nestlé Purina PetCare Company; Poudre Valley Health 

System; Premier Inc.; PRO-TEC Coating Company; Richland College; The RitzCarlton Hotel Company, L.L.C.; Sharp HealthCare; SSM Health Care; Texas 

Nameplate Company, Inc.; U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and 

Engineering Center; and Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program Clinical 

Research Pharmacy Coordinating Center. 

Cover photos: Top row, clockwise: Terry Holliday, former superintendent, 

Iredell-Statesville Schools; Quint Studer, CEO and founder, Studer Group; 

Joseph King, former chief human capital officer, U.S. Army Armament Research, 

Development and Engineering Center; Sister Mary Jean Ryan, FSM, president 

and CEO, SSM Health Care; David Tilton, CEO, AtlantiCare; Samuel M. Liang, 

president and CEO, Medrad; Mike Sather, director, Veterans Affairs Cooperative 

Studies Program Clinical Research Pharmacy Coordinating Center; and JoAnn 

Brumit, CEO, KARLEE 

Except as noted herein, materials contained in this book are in the public domain. 

Public domain information may be freely distributed and copied. However, this 

book contains photographs and other graphics that may be protected by copyright 

law. DILBERT cartoons are used with permission, © Scott Adams/Dist. by United

Feature Syndicate, Inc. Some graphics depicting Baldrige Award winners’ 

organizational processes or results are the property of those organizations and 

are used with their permission. Permission to transmit or reproduce copyrighted 

materials must be obtained directly from the copyright owners. 

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is not recommending 

or endorsing the organizations featured in this book. Organizational results 

referenced in this publication reflect current data at the time each organization 

received the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. 

For more information on the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence 

and the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, visit http://www.nist.gov/

baldrige/. For more information on state, local, and sector-specific awards based 

on the Baldrige Criteria, visit the Alliance for Performance for Excellence at 

http://www.baldrigepe.org/alliance/. 
Contents 

Foreword by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Arbuckle Professor, 

Harvard Business School; Chair and Director, 

Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative ...........................v 

Foreword by Gregory R. Page, Chairman and 

Chief Executive Officer, Cargill, Inc. ...............................................vii 

Letter from Harry S. Hertz, Director, 

Baldrige Performance Excellence Program ......................................ix 

Introduction....................................................................................xi 

Representative Role Models and Data ............................................ 1 

The Case for Baldrige: Model of Excellence in Manufacturing .... 2 

The Case for Baldrige: A Service Company’s Success Story ........ 10 

The Case for Baldrige: Benefits for a Small Business .................. 16 

The Case for Baldrige: A Health Care Role Model ..................... 25 

The Case for Baldrige: Role Models in Education ...................... 35 

The Case for Baldrige: Successes in the Nonprofit Sector .......... 46 

Award Winners’ Journeys: How Baldrige Led Them to Excellence .. 55 

The Criteria: Framework for Performance Excellence .................. 81 

Ethics and Sustainability: 

The Foundation for Role-Model Results ..................................... 83 


How Can the Baldrige Program Help You Now? ........................... 93
 

Appendix: Examples by Criteria Category .................................... 99
 
Foreword

 by Rosabeth Moss Kanter 

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (as the Baldrige 

Program was first known) was developed in response to a crisis in U.S. 

competitiveness several decades ago, at the dawn of the global information 

era. American manufacturing was losing ground to Japanese companies 

which had adopted quality improvement systems taught to them, ironically, 

by an American, W. Edwards Deming, as part of the rebuilding effort after 

World War II. The Deming Prize was named in his honor in 1950 in Japan. 

By the mid-1980s, Japan was an economic powerhouse, and sluggish 

U.S. companies were under pressure to seek performance excellence and 

innovation or risk losing further ground. The rise of Japanese industry, 

from automotive manufacturing to electronics, could not be written off as 

due to low-cost labor; it was clearly seen as emanating from outstanding 

management systems, captured in the criteria for the Deming Prize. 

In 1987, the U.S. government countered with its own prize, the Baldrige 

Award, to encourage American companies to examine their practices, 

benchmark against the best companies, and make necessary changes to 

become leaner, faster, and more customer-oriented, with fact-based decisions 

and responsiveness to multiple stakeholders, all in pursuit of zero defects 

and high performance. This quest for quality, backed by a prize awarded by 

the President of the United States, became a national movement, informing 

management practices well beyond the companies applying for the prize. 

The success of the Baldrige program in stimulating change led its leaders to 

apply it to other major sectors requiring transformation, notably health care 

and education. I was privileged to serve on the Board of Overseers for the 

Baldrige Program at this pivotal point in its history. 

Foreword v 
Now, in 2011, U.S. competitiveness is again at risk, with a new set of Asian 

challengers from China and emerging market countries. The early 21st century 

adds some new performance pressures on companies. Environmental impact 

and social responsibility have been added to the agenda. The rise of the 

Internet makes customers more knowledgeable and less forgiving, given their 

access to information about numerous choices; after all, global companies 

can source from anywhere in the world. Transparency makes it harder 

for companies to hide mistakes. Some of their mistakes have enormously 

disastrous consequences, such as the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The 

era of information-driven globalization is characterized by frequent, rapid and 

sometimes unpredictable change, both done by leaders and done to them by 

events in the external world. Globalization increases the speed of change, as 

more competitors from more places produce surprises. System effects send 

ripples that spread to more places faster—innovations in one place proving 

disruptive in others, problems in one economy triggering problems in others. 

This context makes the Baldrige Performance Criteria more necessary and 

appropriate than ever. Continuous improvement is not merely a good thing 

for a handful of companies but a survival strategy for every organization, as 

the only way to create organizations capable of rapid adjustment to rising 

standards and changing conditions. Indeed, the Baldrige Program has itself 

evolved to add more variables that have become critical to effectiveness in an 

intensely competitive global information economy. There is a high premium 

for innovation, the faster the better, as well as the ability to continuously 

upgrade products and processes. 

The data and stories in this timely book make a convincing case that use 

of the Baldrige Criteria can help organizations assess and improve their 

performance, becoming more sophisticated about how to align all of their 

processes to achieve desired results. That is important not only to the success 

of manufacturing and service enterprises but also sectors such as health care 

and education which are vital to the future of the economy and the well-being 

of society. The Baldrige Award is given to only a few of the applicants because 

they meet the highest standards. But in a sense, every organization that uses 

the Baldrige Criteria for self-study and change can turn out to be a winner due 

to their increased ability to learn, adapt, innovate, and achieve excellence. 

Rosabeth Moss Kanter is the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard 

Business School and chair and director of the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative. She 

is author or coauthor of 18 books. Her latest book is SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create 

Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good. 

vi Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Foreword

 by Gregory R. Page 

Building a high-performance organization in a volatile world can at 

times seem fairly elusive for those who are leading large institutions. 

From the growth of technology and shifting customer expectations to 

the emergence of new markets and global competition, it is clear that 

what it takes to be successful today is different from what it took just 

a decade ago—and certainly different from what it was when the U.S. 

Congress passed the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Improvement 

Act in 1987. The purpose of the Act and the awards program it spawned 

was to enhance U.S. competitiveness by encouraging organizations to 

focus on quality and performance excellence. It did this by establishing 

criteria for evaluating improvement efforts, identifying and recognizing 

role-model organizations, and disseminating and sharing best practices. 

Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance 

Excellence provides today’s executives with practical examples and 

keen insights on how organizations can stay focused and excel. While 

the information shared here comes from Baldrige Award winners, 

this volume is neither a celebration of their accomplishments nor 

an arcane, overly complex view of every step taken in their journey. 

Instead, what you have here is a useful guide that substantively shares 

how others are successfully navigating the storms of change, achieving 

operational effectiveness and efficiency, improving financial results, 

enhancing customer service, and winning new markets through 

application of the Baldrige Criteria. 

Foreword vii 
For those whose organizations have had the honor of receiving the 

Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the real win comes not 

in a unit of a company or institution receiving the award but in what 

the efforts teach us about ourselves, our organizations, and what 

we can do to create a culture of performance excellence. At Cargill, 

our egg processing and corn milling businesses have both been 

recognized with Baldrige Awards. The businesses’ collective efforts 

not only exposed improvements in operations, product quality, and 

food safety, but they have helped to fuel a business excellence ethic 

within the entire corporation where units in Asia, South America, 

Europe, and Africa, as well as North America, are now looking 

more closely at their processes and using Baldrige-type criteria to 

achieve continuous improvement and to give them an edge in the 

marketplace. In short, the Baldrige Criteria and methodology have 

been critical in helping us align our business strategy, engage our 

employees, and inspire our teams to constantly strive to improve 

every day. 

At Cargill we are intent on building a balanced, diverse, and resilient 

organization. We aspire to be “the global leader in nourishing 

people.” None of that is possible without trust—trust between 

ourselves and our customers, trust between ourselves and other 

stakeholders, trust that we will adhere to ethical standards, and trust 

that we will deliver quality products and do what we say we will do. 

Underlying that notion of trust is making sure one has the methods 

and processes in place to sustainably deliver against ever-increasing 

expectations and our desire for continuous improvement. The 

Baldrige Criteria and methodology have been foundational for us 

in that journey. Baldrige 20/20 will shed light on how you and your 

organization might benefit from this as well. 

Gregory R. Page is the chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Cargill, 

Incorporated. He joined Cargill in 1974 as a trainee and, over the years, has held a number 

of positions in the United States and overseas. He also serves as a member of the board of 

directors of Eaton Corporation and Carlson, and he is immediate past-chair of the board of 

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. 

viii Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Baldrige Performance Excellence Program 

National Institute of Standards and Technology • Department of 

Dear Reader: 

As an executive, you may ask the logical question, “Why should I read this book?” 

I have two answers for you: because you want your organization to survive and 

thrive as a respected organization today and a respected organization in the year 

2020, and because 20/20 hindsight is easy but 20/20 foresight is not. Any leader 

can assess where he or she has been, as well as his or her successes and failures, 

but to establish the path for future success, track progress, and adjust course as 

needed are much more challenging. The Baldrige Award winners whose results, 

stories, and strategies are shared in this book provide guidance on achieving 20/20 

foresight. They are competitiveness and innovation leaders, and they are worth 

emulating. 

These are uncertain times for all enterprises. The future will be full of strategic 

challenges as we adjust to the shifting dimensions of our global economy. The 

Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence provide a framework for addressing 

these challenges and assessing progress. The organizations in this book are role 

models, and their success can be replicated, but you have to start the journey. This 

book will hopefully inspire you, through these role models’ successes, to say, “I 

can face the future with confidence, strategy, and structure.” 

I have had the good fortune of being associated with the Baldrige Performance 

Excellence Program for almost 20 years. I have participated in the evolution of 

the Baldrige Criteria from a set of criteria for product quality to a set of criteria for 

organizational excellence. I have had the privilege of seeing organizations grow 

and change to meet new challenges and opportunities and to achieve role-model 

status. I have had the honor of meeting some of the most wonderful people, 

visionary leaders, and engaged employees our country has to offer. Through this 

book, I hope the courage, enthusiasm, and success of these people and their 

organizations will excite you to embark on your own Baldrige journey—your own 

journey to excellence and sustainability. 

What led the organizations in this book to pursue a Baldrige journey? Some turned 

to Baldrige out of crisis. They were on the road to extinction and looking for a tool 
to save their organizations. They had heard about Baldrige and needed to do something 

very different from their current business model. In recent years, most organizations 

were doing well but were faced with an ever more complex environment. They were 

looking for a systems approach to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. 

As I write this introduction, I am on a flight from the fourth meeting of the Baldrige 

Executive Fellows to the Texas Award for Performance Excellence program’s annual 

conference. The Executive Fellows came together almost a year ago for a year-long 

experience to learn from Baldrige Award winners by witnessing their performance 

firsthand at their sites and learning from their executives. Every session has been 

invigorating for them and me. The Texas program will showcase organizations on a 

Baldrige journey that have received recognition at the state level (70 percent of Baldrige 

Award winners start at their state or local Baldrige-based programs). This book will give 

you an introduction that documents why such companies, large and small; nonprofits; 

schools; and health care organizations, across the United States, are making this larger 

commitment to a Baldrige journey. 

Are you still a skeptic about Baldrige? Are you willing to invest a few hours to look at 

the potential of Baldrige in your organization and then see if it is for you? Every journey 

begins with a single step. Take this first step, and then, I hope, you will challenge your 

organization to achieve excellence! 

Many people and many organizations contributed to this book. I would like to thank 

two people on the Baldrige Program staff—Christine Schaefer and Dawn Bailey—who 

took the lead, believed in this project, and translated an idea into reality. I also would 

like to thank all the Baldrige Award winners who let us tell their stories. The family 

members of Secretary Malcolm Baldrige, for whom this program is named, have been 

strong supporters throughout the history of the program. And finally I would like to 

recognize Curt Reimann, the initial director of the program, who conceived what a 

business-government partnership could achieve and who wrote the first set of Baldrige 

Criteria in 1988. 

Harry S. Hertz 

Director, Baldrige Performance Excellence Program 

Summer 2011 

Harry S. Hertz

Director, Baldrige Performance Excellence Program

Summer 2011
Introduction 

Hindsight may be 20/20, but without a crystal ball, how can you 

make sound decisions now that will steer your organization toward 

success on the road ahead? 

The Baldrige framework for performance excellence® is a validated 

management tool designed to help organizations do just that. The 

framework—the Criteria for Performance Excellence®—can help you 

improve your organization’s current operations and achieve longterm sustainability. In fact, the 86 organizations that received the 

Baldrige Award between 1980 and 2010 have proven that applying 

the Baldrige Criteria to the way they run their businesses has led to 

better financial results; satisfied, loyal customers; improved products 

and services; and an engaged workforce. 

While no management system can enable you to predict exactly 

what challenges will arise in the years—or days—to come, using 

the Baldrige Criteria as a framework for ongoing self-assessment 

and planning will mean that you are better prepared to meet 

even daunting, unexpected challenges. You will have a focus on 

results, and you will have systematic processes in place that are 

effective, fully deployed, agile, regularly evaluated for improvement, 

responsive to customer and stakeholder needs, and integrated into 

all operational areas. Your organization will also have the ability to 

innovate for the future. 

Introduction xi 
The Criteria for 

Performance Excellence 

The Criteria for Performance Excellence are a set of questions 

focusing on the critical aspects of management that help you guide 

your organization toward success and sustainability. Award-winning 

organizations use the Criteria for self-assessment, for improvement, 

and as a framework for performance excellence, integrating the 

Criteria into how they conduct business and/or care for patients or 

help students learn. Using the Criteria to assess your organization 

can help you align resources; improve communication, productivity, 

and effectiveness; and achieve strategic goals. 

The Criteria are not prescriptive; they will not tell you what to 

do to gain results. Instead, they focus on the drivers of success 

and interrelated core values and concepts, from management 

by fact to visionary leadership, customer-driven excellence, and 

management for innovation. The preface of the Criteria, also called 

the Organizational Profile, consists of introductory sets of questions 

and is where you detail your company’s strategic context, including 

challenges, advantages, and organizational relationships. Because 

the Organizational Profile sets a context for your organization, the 

Criteria can apply to every organization, large or small, across every 

sector of the U.S. economy. 

The Sections of This Book 

The next section, “Representative Role Models and Data,” explains 

how role-model organizations have applied the Baldrige Criteria 

for Performance Excellence to how they run their businesses and 

received a huge return on their investments. Data are provided to 

show improvements in financial returns, customer and workforce 

satisfaction, and graduation rates, among many other measures. 

Data are presented by sector: manufacturing, service, small business, 

health care, education, and nonprofit. These data are compiled 

from publicly available sources in the years leading up to the 

organizations’ receiving the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality 

Award.® 

xii Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Baldrige Award winners’ distinctive experiences in using the Criteria 

to attain performance excellence are detailed in “Award Winners’ 

Journeys: How Baldrige Led Them to Excellence,” complete with 

dos and don’ts to guide you if you decide to take the challenge. 

In “The Criteria: Framework for Performance Excellence,” you’ll 

learn about the critical questions asked within the seven interrelated 

areas covered by this leading-edge management tool. Data are 

presented here on ethics and sustainability. 

“How Can the Baldrige Program Help You Now?” details the steps 

you may want to take now as you begin your journey to performance 

excellence using the Criteria and the practices and guidance of 

Baldrige Award-winning organizations. 

Finally, the appendix, “Examples by Criteria Category,” provides a 

sampling of Baldrige Award winners’ processes and results (current 

as of the year each won the award) to exemplify each of the seven 

Criteria categories. 

Introduction xiii 

Representative 

Role Models and Data 

By adopting the systems perspective behind the Baldrige Criteria 

for Performance Excellence, executives of role-model organizations 

have improved their operations and results and even achieved 

breakthrough gains in performance. The organizations described in 

this section represent the best of the best in the U.S. manufacturing, 

service, small business, health care, education, and nonprofit 

sectors. All have received the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality 

Award, the highest level of recognition that a U.S. organization 

can receive for performance excellence, and all have used the 

feedback from their Baldrige assessments to build on their strengths 

and address their areas for improvement. As part of applying for the 

Baldrige Award, an applicant receives a feedback report from a team 

of trained examiners that outlines the organization’s strengths and 

opportunities for improvement from the team’s perspective. 

The following pages contain some of these Baldrige Award 

winners’ stories and the data that make the case for beginning your 

organization’s Baldrige quest toward excellence. 

Representative Role Models and Data 1 
excel in them.” 

The Case for Baldrige:
 

Model of Excellence in Manufacturing
 

“The economic environment is difficult for Cargill Corn Milling, 

as it is difficult for many manufacturing companies today. But . . . 

by utilizing the processes and tools that we’ve learned from 

Baldrige, we’re able to not only meet these challenges but actually 

Alan Willits, President and Business Unit Leader 

Cargill Corn Milling 

2008 Baldrige Award winner 

Cargill Corn Milling North America (CCM), based in Wayzata, 

Minnesota, is a business unit within privately held Cargill, Inc., that 

manufactures corn- and sugar-based products. CCM has a workforce 

of 2,321 employees and delivers 60-plus products to more than 

3,000 customers in food, feed, and fermentation markets. 

With revenues of more than $1 billion 

a year, CCM saw its earnings after taxes 

nearly triple in the four years preceding 

its recognition as a Baldrige Award 

winner in 2008. In addition, its cost of 

doing business—expense as a percentage 

of gross profit—decreased from about 

35 percent to 30 percent over three 

years. In this measure, Cargill exceeded 

competitive benchmarks by at least 5 

percent over that period. 

CCM has been using the Baldrige Criteria as a self-assessment 

framework since the early 1990s (see the story of its performance 

excellence journey on page 56). Today, the company’s focus on 

continuous improvement is evident in its ongoing efforts to increase 

operational reliability and effectiveness through such approaches as 

real-time and predictive monitoring of equipment health, stringent 

2 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
maintenance, and careful energy usage. As a result, CCM maintained 

steady per-bushel costs from fiscal year (FY) 2006 to FY2008 even 

though energy, chemical, and maintenance costs increased 50 to 80 

percent, 30 percent, and 10 percent, respectively. 

“Good processes do not insulate us from reality, but they do give 

us the structure to recover in tough times and improve in good 

times,” Willits stated at the Baldrige Program’s annual Quest for 

Excellence® conference in 2009. “Food safety is a critical element of 

our manufacturing and delivery processes. We make ingredients that 

go into many major food products. For example, one railcar of high 

fructose can sweeten approximately 2 million cans of soft drinks. In 

some cases, our product will be on the grocery store shelves within 

36 hours of production. This requires rigid food safety standards and 

controls to protect all consumers, including employees and their 

families.” 

As the chart shows, CCM’s facilities have maintained scores in the 

superior range during third-party audits. Yet, said Willits, “No matter 

how well we score, we can never compromise our standards.” Audit Score

Food Safety Scores

1000

900

800

700

Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6

Superior Range

Excellent Range

Satisfactory Range

Year 1

Better

CCM Goal (Superior Range) CCM

Representative Role Models and Data 3 
4 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 

The Proof Is in the Data, Part 1: 

The Baldrige Effect on 

Manufacturing 

Since 2000, ten manufacturing organizations have received the 

Baldrige Award: 

• a subunit of a large independent manufacturer that designs, produces, 

and assembles driveshafts and related components and provides related 

services 

• a contract manufacturer of precision sheet metal and machined 

components for the telecommunications, semiconductor, and medical 

equipment industries 

• a printer and supplier of check products and related services to financial 

institutions 

• a business unit that produces commercial and industrial radio products, 

as well as communications and information technology 

• a company with a large market share in developing, manufacturing, 

marketing, and servicing medical devices used to diagnose and treat 

disease 

• a privately held corporation that manufactures frozen, ready-to-use food 

products 

• a manufacturer of egg-based food products that is a subsidiary of a large, 

privately held international corporation providing food and agricultural 

products 

• a manufacturer of corn- and sugar-based food products that is a business 

unit of a large, privately held international corporation providing food 

and agricultural products 

• a contractor that specializes in electrical, mechanical, and engineered 

material components for national defense systems 

• a manufacturer of packaged dog and cat food
In the years leading up to recognition as Baldrige Award winners, 

these manufacturers achieved very favorable results that directly 

improved revenues, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction, 

as well as other performance measures. These achievements are 

highlighted below. 

I m p r ov e d F I n a n c I a l re s u lt s 

a Annual Revenue Increases

Average Annual Improvement: 48% 

•	 Global sales of $12.5 billion in the year it won the Baldrige 

Award. In addition, the company increased its revenue over the 

7 years leading up to its Baldrige Award despite marginal growth 

in the U.S. pet population during the same period. (Nestlé Purina 

PetCare Company) 

•	 15-fold annual improvements in cost savings from supply-chain 

efforts, from $2 million to $65 million over 2 years (Honeywell 

Federal Manufacturing & Technologies [FM&T]) 

•	 20% annual cost savings from energy conservation 

improvements for 3 years (Honeywell FM&T) 

a Five manufacturers did not publicly report a comparable measure. These average 

improvement rates were sustained annually over the specified time periods, which reflect 

the most recent results reported by the manufacturers in the year each received the 

Baldrige Award. 

35% 

74% 70% 

14% 11% 

A: 12 Years B: 5 Years C: 4 Years D: 5 Years E: 6 Years

Baldrige Award Winners and Time Periods 

Representative Role Models and Data 5 
•	 $23.5 million to $27 million annual cost savings from deployed 

innovations and increased productivity for 3 fiscal years 

(Honeywell FM&T) 

•	 More than $7.5 million annual cost savings from implementing 

innovative ideas for 2 years (Cargill Corn Milling) 

s at I s F I e d c u s t o m e r s 

Customer Satisfaction Levelsa

95% 96% 100%

88%

96%

80%

A  B  C  D  E  F
 

Baldrige Award Winners
 

a

Four manufacturers did not publicly report a comparable measure. The levels shown 

above reflect the last year reported before the award. 

1. Manufacturer A reported customer satisfaction of 95% or higher 

for 4 years, compared with the commercial industry’s best-inclass levels of 78% to 85%. 

2. Manufacturer B reported 100% customer satisfaction rates for 4 

years in 3 of 5 key indicators (on-time delivery, technical support, 

and customer service access) and rates above 90% for its other 2 

key indicators (product performance and product freshness). 

3. Manufacturer C’s customer satisfaction rate increased 11% 

annually for 3 years. 

4. In addition to overall customer satisfaction and repurchase/

recommend rates exceeding 88% for 4 years, 99% of 

Manufacturer D’s customers were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” 

with customer service in the last year reported. 

5. In surveys of partner organizations, Manufacturer E sustained a 

96% satisfaction rate for 5 years. 

6 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Representative Role Models and Data 7 

6. Manufacturer F’s overall customer satisfaction levels averaged 

more than 80% for 3 years, a performance that was better than 

that of all its competitors. 

• 99.9% combined quality/reliability ratings by traditional 

customers and 98.4% to 99% ratings by nontraditional 

customers for 3 years (Honeywell FM&T) 

• 96% customer loyalty—customers willing to continue working 

with the company—over 4 quarters, beating the commercial 

industry’s best-in-class level of 95% for same period (Honeywell 

FM&T) 

• 23% annual decline in customer incidents—complaints and 

rejections per 1,000 shipments—from 10.5 to 3.3 over 3 years 

(Cargill Corn Milling) 

• Nearly 12% annual decline in customer complaints per 

shipment in 3 years. The company improved these results despite 

an increase in shipments of 18% over 5 years. (Cargill Corn 

Milling) 

• From 1996 to 2003, improvement from the top 20 to 2nd in a 

ranking of customer satisfaction among more than 50 medical 

imaging companies. In addition, from 2001 to 2010, this 

company’s global customer satisfaction ratings using the Net 

Promoter scoring system, which measures customer loyalty based 

on willingness to refer, have shown steady improvement from 

50% to 63%, surpassing the best-in-class benchmark of 50%. 

(MEDRAD, Inc.) 
a s at I s F I e d , s ta b l e Wo r k F o r c e 

Workforce Satisfaction Levelsa

80% 80% 83% 84%

95%

A  B  C  D  E
 

Baldrige Award Winners
 

a

Five manufacturers did not publicly report a comparable measure. The levels shown 

above reflect the last year reported before the award. 

1. Manufacturer A’s total score on its employee satisfaction survey 

improved 14% over 4.5 years, or 3% annually, and the company 

neared world-class levels on core employee satisfaction questions 

based on an industry benchmark provided by the Hogan Center 

for Performance Excellence. 

2. For Manufacturer B, after overall employee satisfaction equaled 

or outperformed that of the top 20 companies in Hay Group 

employee surveys for at least 4 consecutive years, the company 

switched to a new benchmark in order to promote continuous 

improvement. Over the next 2 years, its overall employee 

satisfaction rate improved by approximately 10 percentage 

points, approaching the best-in-class standard of 90%. 

3. Overall employee satisfaction scores for Manufacturer C were 

higher than those of its competitors. The company sustained 

excellent levels for 5 consecutive years. 

4.	 Manufacturer D achieved a 3% annual improvement rate over 6 

years, with the most current results outperforming those of two 

peers identified as benchmarks by this manufacturer. 

5. Manufacturer E’s results on an employee job satisfaction measure 

improved by more than 10% over 3 years, and its results were the 

best in its city. 

8 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Representative Role Models and Data 9 

• 72% employee satisfaction scores on “feels appreciated” survey 

item, compared to the commercial (private) industry’s bestin-class level of 67%; 81% employee satisfaction scores on 

“management listens to ideas,” compared to the commercial 

industry’s best-in-class level of 76%; 72% employee satisfaction 

scores on “positive environment,” compared to the commercial 

industry’s best-in-class level of 58%; 80% employee satisfaction 

scores on “information provided” to employees, compared to 

the commercial industry’s best-in-class level of 65% (Honeywell 

FM&T) 

• 19% annual improvement rate in overall employee engagement 

on company survey for 4 years (Cargill Corn Milling)

• 8% employee turnover rate, compared to 12% industry average 

reported by the Bureau of National Affairs (Cargill Corn Milling) 

• For 3 years, 8% annual decrease in workforce turnover, which 

was previously as high as 30% annually (Sunny Fresh Foods [now 

Cargill Kitchen Solutions]) 

• 4% annual improvement in workforce turnover for 5 years, 

better than a benchmark based on data from Fortune magazine’s 

“Top 10 Places to Work” in 5 of 6 years (MEDRAD, Inc.) 

Improved Operations 

• 95% operational reliability effectiveness rate—a ratio between 

actual production and commercial demand—3 percentage 

points shy of the world-class benchmark set by the Society of 

Maintenance and Reliability Professionals (Cargill Corn Milling) 

• Over 5 years, 42% improvement in operational asset health, 

which increased from 60% healthy assets to 85%, the world-class 

level (Cargill Corn Milling) 
The Case for Baldrige:
 

A Service Company’s Success Story
 

“Today, 1,700 not-for-profit hospitals—and the patients they serve— 

are the beneficiaries of [a vision born from the Baldrige Criteria]. . . . 

Together we have achieved billions of dollars in savings—savings that 

strengthen the ability of hospitals to provide quality care.” 

Richard A. Norling, President/CEO

Premier Inc. 


2006 Baldrige Award winner
 

Premier Inc. is the largest health care alliance in the United States, 

serving approximately 1,700 hospitals and more than 43,000 

other health care sites, including nursing homes and ambulatory 

care centers. More than 900 employees serve at the health care 

alliance’s headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, and in offices 

in San Diego, California, and Washington, D.C. To improve patient 

outcomes while safely reducing the cost of care, the Premier health 

care alliance’s three business units provide members with group 

purchasing and supply-chain management, insurance and risk 

management, and informatics and performance improvement tools. 

Formed in 1996 from three smaller alliances, the company is now 

owned by some 200 nonprofit health care providers and health 

system organizations. 

The strategic alliance 

enables the owners 

to share services and 

programs aimed at 

improving the quality 

and cost-effectiveness 

of clinical operations. 

From the start, Premier 

Inc.’s executives set a 

goal for its member hospitals to deliver the best, most cost-effective 

care in the nation and for the health care alliance to have a major 

influence on reshaping health care. To that end, the alliance has 

focused its business units on driving measurable improvement and 

performance breakthroughs in disciplines where such opportunities 

10 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
exist. The success of this strategy is evident in the company’s 

financial results. Savings and cash returns to its hospital owners 

increased from approximately $180 million to $804 million over 

four years. During that period, the company’s total revenue rose 

from approximately $410 million to over $500 million. Premier 

Inc. also increased its consolidated pretax operating income from 

approximately $140 million to approximately $223 million, which 

exceeded or equaled that of its largest single competitor in each of 

those years. While Premier Inc.’s operating margin increased from 

35 percent to 50 percent over three years and was higher than the 

top competitor’s in each year, its operating expenses remained well 

below the competitor’s. 

In addition to achieving impressive financial results, the Premier health 

care alliance has been a leader in establishing and promoting best 

practices and methods for driving ethical conduct, transparency, and 

accountability within the group purchasing community. For example, 

Premier Inc. created the Healthcare Group Purchasing Industry 

Initiative to promote and monitor best ethical practices in purchasing 

for hospitals and other health care providers. As a result of its efforts, 

all the major health care organizations involved in cooperative 

purchasing have committed to publicly reporting key information. 

At the 2007 Quest for Excellence conference, Premier Inc. President 

and CEO Richard A. Norling characterized the Baldrige Criteria as 

useful to the uniquely structured organization from its start. “We had 

the great opportunity [in 1996] to create a new-generation health 

care alliance, going well beyond the shared services organization,” 

Norling said. At the same time, added Norling, his company faced 

great challenges at the outset—“the challenges you might expect in 

newly merging organizations in a changing health care and business 

environment.” 

Yet, like other organizations, the Premier health care alliance 

reportedly found the Criteria for Performance Excellence helpful in 

achieving success and applicable to its unique situation. “Embedding 

Baldrige was crucial to our shaping Premier successfully from 

these beginnings,” said Norling. “It is very true that the Criteria, not 

being prescriptive, apply to all kinds of organizations in all kinds of 

situations.” 

Representative Role Models and Data 11 
The Proof Is in the Data, Part 2:
 

The Baldrige Effect on Service
 

Since 2000, five service organizations have received the Baldrige Award: 

•	 an operations and maintenance contractor for small to midsized 

wastewater and water-treatment systems 

•	 a business unit that provides maintenance, modification, repair, and 

training for aircraft crews and maintenance staff 

•	 the financial services business unit of a manufacturer of construction and 

mining equipment, gas and diesel engines, and industrial turbines 

•	 the contractor that operates and maintains the U.S. Strategic Petroleum 

Reserve 

•	 the largest U.S. health care alliance

In the years leading up to recognition as Baldrige Award winners, 

these organizations achieved favorable results that directly improved 

revenues, market share, and customer satisfaction, as well as other 

measures. These achievements are highlighted below. 

I m p r ov e d F I n a n c I a l re s u lt s 

a Revenue Increases over 4 Years

Average Annual Improvement: 17%

A B C

100%

81%

22%

Baldrige Award Winners

a

Two businesses in the service sector did not publicly report a comparable measure. These 

results reflect the most recent time periods reported in the year each business received the 

Baldrige Award. 

1.	 Service Business A realized this growth in a flat market, resulting 

in a loss of market share for its competitors. 

2.	 For Service Business B, total revenue grew at an average annual 

rate of 15% over this period while its top competitor’s revenue 

grew less than 5% annually. 

12 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
3.	 In addition to this increase in revenue, Service Business C’s 

consolidated pretax operating income increased at an average 

annual rate of nearly 15%. 

•	 Nearly 7% per year increase in market share on average in the 

core business segment over 3 years (Operations Management 

International, Inc. [now CH2M HILL]) 

•	 34% increase in assets and 54% increase in profit over 5 

years, against industry declines of 21% and 35%, respectively 

(Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation-U.S.) 

•	 Customer award fees about 70% higher than earned by the 

previous contractor over 5 years (DynMcDermott Petroleum 

Operations Company [now DM Petroleum Operations Company]) 

•	 Nearly 20% average annual increase in consolidated pretax 

operating income over 4 years (Premier Inc.)

s at I s F I e d c u s t o m e r s 

Customer Satisfaction Levelsa

75%

93% 94%

78%

89%

A  B  C  D  E
 

Baldrige Award Winners
 

a

The levels shown above reflect the last year reported before the award. 

1.	 Service Business A’s customer satisfaction level exceeded the 

best-practice threshold of 60% for the survey. 

2.	 Customer satisfaction in Service Business B’s largest division 

was world-class in the industry and the American Customer 

Satisfaction Index. 

Representative Role Models and Data 13 
3.	 Service Business C’s customer satisfaction level reflects a 27% 

increase over 6 years. 

4.	 Service Business D’s customer satisfaction level was 6 percentage 

points higher than that of its best competitor. 

5.	 Service Business E’s customer satisfaction level reflects a 13% 

increase over 3 years. 

•	 95% of contracts renewed by its customers in the year 

the Baldrige Award was received (Operations Management 

International [now CH2M HILL]) 

•	 Highest average length of customer retention in the industry 

in the year the Baldrige Award was received (Operations 

Management International [now CH2M HILL]) 

•	 95% customer loyalty and 97% customer retention in the year 

the Baldrige Award was received (Premier Inc.) 

a	 sta b l e , s at I s F I e d Wo r k F o r c e 

Workforce Retention Levelsa

97% 94% 97% 97%

A  B  C  D

Baldrige Award Winners

a

One business in the service sector did not publicly report a comparable measure. The 

levels shown above reflect the last year reported before the award. 

•	 39% decrease in employee turnover over 5 years, to 16%, 

against an industry average of just over 27% (Operations 

Management International [now CH2M HILL]) 

14 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Representative Role Models and Data 15 

• 80% of employees recommending the company as a good place 

to work against a national norm of 55% in the year the Baldrige 

Award was received (Caterpillar Financial Services CorporationU.S.) 

• Employee satisfaction 50 percentage points higher than the 

industry benchmark set by Business Research Laboratory in 

the year the Baldrige Award was received (DynMcDermott 

Petroleum Operations Company [now DM Petroleum Operations 

Company]) 

Excellent Service 

• 22% average drop in industrial customers’ operating costs over 

2 years (Operations Management International [now CH2M 

HILL]) 

• Improvement from 95% to 99% in drawdown readiness for the 

U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve over 6 years; the company’s 

service performance also has distinguished it as the global 

benchmark for cost-efficiency in crude oil storage systems 

(DynMcDermott Petroleum Operations Company [now DM 

Petroleum Operations Company]) 

• More than $2.5 billion in savings for partner hospitals through 

cooperative purchasing and other services offered by the 

organization over 3 years (Premier Inc.) 
The Case for Baldrige: 

Benefits for a Small Business 

“The Baldrige Award application process has provided our company 

with many learning and continuous improvement opportunities, 

making PRO-TEC better for the endeavor.” 

W. Paul Worstell, President (1997–2010) 

PRO-TEC Coating Company 

2007 Baldrige Award winner 

Established in 1990 as a joint venture between United States 

Steel Corporation and Kobe Steel Ltd. of Japan, PRO-TEC Coating 

Company provides coated sheet steel primarily to the U.S. 

automotive industry for use in manufacturing cars, trucks, and sport 

utility vehicles. PRO-TEC’s 236 employees, called “Associates,” work 

in a state-of-the-art, 730,000-square-foot facility surrounded by corn 

and soybean fields in the small, rural town of Leipsic, Ohio. When it 

received the Baldrige Award, PRO-TEC had been profitable for more 

than a decade; sales reached $846 million in 2006. 

16 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Systems reliability is critical to PRO-TEC. The company has 

developed a stringent preventive maintenance program that includes 

routine scheduled outages and critical spare parts stored on-site. 

In the four years before it received the Baldrige Award, PRO-TEC 

had led the industry by operating 98 percent of the time. Over 

that period, PRO-TEC produced no less than 85 percent of the 

United States’ advanced high-strength steel supply. Revenue per 

Associate reached approximately $4 million, nearly four times the 

Industry Week 90th percentile benchmark, demonstrating PROTEC’s industry leadership in this area. In a capital-intensive industry, 

PRO-TEC’s return on assets, a measure of long-term viability, 

sustained an upward trend for four years beginning in 2002. PROTEC consistently fulfilled its customers’ expectations of quality by 

delivering products with a defect rate of less than 0.12 percent. In 

a 2005 and 2006 survey of customers—covering product quality, 

on-time delivery, service, product development, and overall 

performance—PRO-TEC scored better than its competition in all 

categories. 

PRO-TEC is a role model for its focus on its workforce. As the figure 

below shows, in the two-year period before it received the Baldrige 

Award, PRO-TEC maintained a recordable injury frequency of fewer 

U.S. Occupational Health and Safety (OSHA) a Recordable Rate

(Associate Quality of Life) 

Per 200,000 Man­Hours

5 

4 

3 

2 

1 

0 

Better

Year 1  Year 2  Year 3  Year 4  Year 5  Year­to­date

Year 6

Competitor 1 Competitor 2 PRO­TEC 

a

The OSHA Recordable Rate is an employee injury and illness incidence measure used to 

evaluate organizational safety. 

Representative Role Models and Data 17 
Turnover Rate

(Associate Quality of Life) 

8% 

Better

6% 

4% 

2% 

0% 

PRO­TEC Involuntary  Turnover 

Industry Week 75th Benchmark 

PRO­TEC Voluntary Turnover 

Turnover Rate

Year 1  Year 2  Year 3  Year 4  Year 5  Year­to­date

Year 6

than two injuries per 200,000 man-hours—lower than the industry 

benchmark. Turnover rate (shown in the figure above), another key 

indicator of PRO-TEC Associates’ quality of life, was less than 3 

percent—consistently better than Industry Week’s “Best Plants” 75thpercentile level. As of the year it received the Baldrige Award, PROTEC had never laid off an Associate. 

18 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Representative Role Models and Data 19 

The Proof Is in the Data, Part 3: 

The Baldrige Effect on Small Business 

Since 2000, 12 small businesses, each with 500 or fewer employees, 

have received the Baldrige Award: 

• an independent community bank

• a quick-service restaurant

• a printing, design, and mailing business

• a chemical-specialty manufacturing and sales company

• a screen-printing, photo-engraving, and chemical-etching business

• a luxury car dealership

• a service business providing corrosion protection systems

• a joint venture that provides coated sheet steel

• a family-owned catalog and Internet retailer offering shooting, reloading, 

gunsmithing, and hunting products 

• a consulting firm offering engineering, architecture, environmental 

science, planning, program management, and construction services 

• a management company that has created two fast-casual restaurant 

concepts and implemented these at seven locations 

• a health care consulting firm

Following are some favorable Baldrige effects for these small 

businesses—highlighted improvements or high levels achieved 

on key measures over the three years or more leading up to each 

organization’s role-model recognition. 
20 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 

Increasing Sales, Profits, and Market Share 

• More than 40% annual gross profit, exceeding the industry 

standard (K&N Management) 

• More than 30% annual growth in revenues for the past 9 years, 

exceeding the Association of Management Consulting Firms 

average of 10% annual growth (Studer Group) 

• Annual revenue growth of 12% to 16% for the past 4 years, 

despite minimal growth in the engineering industry (Freese and 

Nichols Inc.) 

• 93% increase in sales over 6 years (MESA Products, Inc.) 

• 25% sales growth rate in 1 year, compared to 10% for its 

competitor; 300% increase in net income as a percentage of 

sales over 5 years (MidwayUSA) 

• 51% increase in gross profit percentage over 4 years and 30% 

increase in new and preowned cars sold over 4 years; 11% 

growth in share of luxury car market at the Plano dealership over 

3 years (Park Place Lexus) 

• 11% increase in profitability over 6 years (Texas Nameplate 

Company, Inc.) 

• 48% growth in net income over 4 years; 5% growth in share of 

primary customers over 2 years (Los Alamos National Bank) 

• 172% improvement in market share in its primary service area 

over 4 years; 72% growth in sales over 4 years, a gain held in 

2002, when the industry declined 6.6% (Branch-Smith Printing 

Division) 

• 400% increase in sales over 12 years (Stoner) 

• Almost doubling of market share over 7 years (Pal’s Sudden 

Service) 
I n c r e a s I n g c u s t o m e r 

s at I s F a c t I o n a n d re t e n t I o n 

Customer Satisfaction Levelsa

93%

87%

98%

87%

96%

84%

92%

99%

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H
 

Baldrige Award Winners
 

a

Four small businesses did not publicly report a comparable measure. The levels shown 

above reflect the last year reported before the award. 

1.	 Customer satisfaction for Small Business A was greater than 90% 

for 3 years. 

2.	 Small Business B realized a 7% gain in customer satisfaction 

over 3 years. 

3.	 Customer satisfaction for Small Business C was 94% or higher for 

5 years. Small Business C’s customer satisfaction level represents 

a 2% gain over 4 years.

4.	 For Small Business D, customer satisfaction increased 4% over 6 

years. 

5.	 For Small Business E, customer satisfaction increased 5% over 6 

years. 

6.	 Customer satisfaction with Small Business F exceeded the 

national average and was higher than satisfaction with all other 

area institutions offering the same service. 

7.	 Small Business G’s result above reflects the average of responses 

to the 9 questions on the company’s client survey. This business 

realized a nearly 40% increase over 3 years in survey ratings of 

its staff by satisfied clients. 

8.	 Small Business H’s 99% exceeded its best competitor’s average 

rating of 85%. 

Representative Role Models and Data 21 
Customer Retention Levels a

70%

99% 100%

77%

A  B  C  D
 

Baldrige Award Winners
 

a

Eight small businesses did not publicly report a comparable measure. The levels shown 

above reflect the last year reported before the award. 

1.	 Small Business A sustained a 70% retention rate for its top 50 

customers for more than 10 years. 

2.	 Over 5 years, Small Business B retained an average of 98% of its 

top customers, who accounted for over 60% of its business. 

3.	 Small Business C improved customer retention 16% over 6 years. 

4.	 Small Business D improved customer retention 14% over 4 

years. 

Improving Employee Measures 

•	 37% improvement in employee satisfaction over 6 years (Stoner) 

•	 28% improvement in employee satisfaction over 5 years and 

12% increase in training hours per employee over 2 years 

(Branch-Smith Printing Division) 

•	 37% decrease in turnover rate over 5 years; its turnover rate in 

the year before it received the Baldrige Award was 127% when 

its best competitor’s turnover rate topped 300% (Pal’s Sudden 

Service) 

•	 11% improvement in employee satisfaction over 2 years; more 

than 80% of the workforce cross-trained to perform multiple 

tasks across departments (Texas Nameplate Company, Inc.) 

22 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
•	 1,533% improvement in the average training hours per 

employee over 4 years; 48% improvement in turnover relative to 

satisfaction over 8 years (Park Place Lexus) 

•	 38% decrease in employee turnover over 5 years and 50% 

improvement in attendance at training over 2 years (Los Alamos 

National Bank) 

•	 78% improvement in training investment in dollars over 4 years 

(MESA Products, Inc.) 

•	 37% improvement in employee satisfaction and engagement 

over 6 years (MidwayUSA) 

Decreases in Voluntary Employee Turnovera

Average Annual Improvement: 16% 

­62% 

­71% 

­82% 

­55% ­56% 

A  B  C  D  E 

3 Years  6 Years  6 Years  4 Years  3 Years 

Baldrige Award Winners and Time Periods 

a Seven small businesses did not publicly report a comparable measure. These results reflect 

the most recent time periods reported by the small businesses in the year each received the 

Baldrige Award. 

Reducing Defects and Nonconformances 

•	 33% improvement in price of nonconformances as percentage of 

sales over 6 years (Branch-Smith Printing Division) 

•	 54% decrease in warehouse errors/orders billed over 5 years 

(Stoner) 

•	 40% improvement in product return rate over 6 years 

(MidwayUSA) 

•	 64% improvement in product nonconformity with specifications, 

as a percentage of sales over 6 years (Texas Nameplate Company, 

Inc.) 

Representative Role Models and Data 23 
24 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 

Ensuring On-Time Delivery 

• 97% on-time shipping, which represents a 4% improvement over 

5 years (MESA Products, Inc.) 

• 98% same-day shipping, which represents a 1% improvement 

over 7 years while improving the cut-off time for guaranteed 

same-day shipping from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. (MidwayUSA) 

• 100% orders shipped same day, which represents an 8% 

improvement over 4 years (Stoner)

• 98% on-time delivery, which represents a 3% improvement over 

3 years (Branch-Smith Printing Division) 

Increasing Productivity and Return on Assets 

• 30% increase in order handout speed over 6 years; sales per 

labor hour improved by about $6 over 3 years (Pal’s Sudden 

Service) 

• 17% improvement in productivity as measured by revenue per 

employee over 7 years (MESA Products, Inc.) 

• 150% improvement in manufacturing productivity over 12 

years; 33% increase in weekly average output of aerosol can 

products over 5 years; 39% return on assets exceeds the industry 

average by 29% and the best competitor by 14% (Stoner)
The Case for Baldrige:
 

A Health Care Role Model
 

“As soon as you become a Baldrige organization, it will 

cost you less to run your business, and your outcomes 

will be better.” 

Rulon Stacey, President 

Poudre Valley Health System 

2008 Baldrige Award winner 

Poudre Valley Health System (PVHS) is a private, nonprofit health 

care organization based in Fort Collins, Colorado. With a current 

workforce of 5,300, the organization provides a full spectrum of 

health care services to residents of northern Colorado, western 

Nebraska, and southern Wyoming through two hospitals (Poudre 

Valley Hospital in Fort Collins and the Medical Center of the Rockies 

in Loveland, Colorado) and a network of clinics and other care 

facilities. 

PVHS stands out as a role model in its sector. 

It ranked in the national top 10% of similar 

organizations for low mortality and high 

satisfaction among patients, in the top 3% for 

employee satisfaction, and in the top 1% for 

physician loyalty. For each of the five years 

leading up to its Baldrige Award, Thomson 

Reuters named PVHS a “Top 100 Hospital,” 

and Modern Healthcare named PVHS one 

of the “Top 100 Best Places to Work.” Its excellence in nursing was 

recognized by designation as a Magnet hospital by the American 

Nurses Credentialing Center, and the National Database of Nursing 

Quality Indicators honored PVHS with the Outstanding Nursing 

Quality Award. PVHS also remained competitively priced in its 

regional health care market, generating $1 billion in annual revenue. 

Representative Role Models and Data 25 
“Our patients and community told us they want high-quality, 

low-cost care. The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award 

demonstrates that we are giving our customers what they asked for 

and that we can do so for years to come,” said Stacey. “Through the 

Baldrige process, we’ve learned that we need to learn. That’s one of 

the best parts about Baldrige.” 

In the years preceding its Baldrige Award, PVHS consistently 

maintained competitive health care costs relative to local 

competitors with a similar patient base and to average costs in the 

Denver metropolitan area, which is PVHS’s secondary service area. 

In 2006, the average PVHS charge was $2,000 lower than that of 

its main competitor and $7,000 lower than the average charge in 

the Denver metropolitan area. While committed to being a lowcost provider and despite declining reimbursements, Poudre Valley 

Hospital dramatically increased its profit per discharge to a level 

greater than that of the top 10 percent of U.S. hospitals, as the 

figure below shows. These results help PVHS achieve its mission of 

remaining an independent, nonprofit organization. 

Profit per Discharge

Dollars

Better

Year 1  Year 2  Year 3  Year 4  Year 5  Year 6  Year 7  Year­to­date

Year 8

(1st Quarter) Poudre Valley Hospital Competitor

U.S. Top 10% U.S. Top 25%

26 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Representative Role Models and Data 27 

The Proof Is in the Data, Part 4: 

The Baldrige Effect on Health Care 

Since 2002, when the first organization received the Baldrige Award 

in the health care category, 12 organizations have been so honored: 

• a private health care system that operates 17 acute care hospitals in 

Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma 

• the largest hospital in the Kansas City, Missouri, metropolitan area

• the largest health care system in the Florida Panhandle

• a private, nonprofit acute care hospital in New Jersey that includes 

environments to promote healing through art and nature 

• an all-private-room facility located on a 28-acre urban campus in Michigan

• the largest rural, nonprofit hospital in the United States

• an integrated health care system in Wisconsin and Illinois

• San Diego County’s largest integrated health care delivery system

• a locally owned health care organization serving 

residents of Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming 

• a nonprofit New Jersey health care system

• a community-based health system serving

residents of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa 

• an acute-care medical facility in suburban 

Chicago that is part of one of the nation’s top-ten 

health systems 

In the years leading up to their recognition as 

Baldrige Award winners, these organizations 

achieved the beneficial results highlighted 

below. 

Decreasing Mortality Rates 

• 24% reduction over 3 years in risk-adjusted 

mortality rate (overall mortality divided by 

expected mortality where 1 is the standard), 

exceeding the top-decile level for this 

hospital’s six-county region as measured by 

Thomson Reuters (Advocate Good Samaritan 

Hospital) 

• 25% reduction in overall mortality rate over 5 years, a rate better 

than the state top quartile and equal to the Agency for Healthcare 

Research and Quality best comparisons (Robert Wood Johnson 

University Hospital Hamilton) 
28 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 

• 23% reduction in overall mortality rate over 2 years (Heartland 

Health) 

• 20% reduction in overall mortality rate over 2 years, a rate 

within the CareScience (a risk-adjusted database) best-practice 

level that is defined as the top 15% of U.S. facilities (Bronson 

Methodist Hospital) 

• 57% reduction in mortality resulting from pneumonia over 3 

years. The decreased mortality rate represents approximately 100 

fewer pneumonia-related deaths. (North Mississippi Medical 

Center) 

• 95% reduction in mortality resulting from acute myocardial 

infarction and nearly 61% reduction in mortality resulting 

from congestive heart failure over 4 years. The reduced rate was 

better than the Quadramed (a national organization providing 

comparative statistics for clinical operations) expected rate. 

(Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton) 

• 38% reduction in mortality resulting from congestive heart 

failure over 4 years (Mercy Health System)

• 33% reduction in mortality resulting from congestive heart 

failure over 4 years. The reduced rate was better than the Premier 

health care alliance’s predicted rate. (AtlantiCare) 

Rising Revenue and Market Share 

• 24% increase in net operating margin over 2 years, exceeding 

that of “AA”-rated hospitals. The operating margin level represents 

top-decile (in the upper 10%) performance in the industry. 

(Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital) 

• Nearly 71% increase in net revenue over 5 years and a stable 

Moody’s “A2” bond rating over 11 years (Mercy Health System) 

• 11% compound annual growth rate in system revenues for 9 

years. This represents a 133% overall improvement or nearly 17% 

annual improvement rate. (AtlantiCare) 

• Top 10% of U.S. hospitals for total margin and operating margin 

in 2009 and maintained Moody’s and Fitch bond ratings of “A” 

and “A2” for 4 years (Heartland Health)
•	 17% increase in overall market share for its primary service area 

over 5 years (Bronson Methodist Hospital) 

•	 Market leadership position with 30% market share for 

cardiology, surgery, and oncology (Robert Wood Johnson 

University Hospital Hamilton) 

•	 65% increase in total revenue over 4 years. At the time it 

received the Baldrige Award, the organization outperformed 

the Council of Teaching Hospitals’ top quartile in financial 

performance and ranked in the top 5% nationally in total margin. 

(Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City) 

•	 56% increase in net revenue over 5 years. This represents 

an average annual growth rate of more than 11%. (Sharp 

HealthCare) 

p at I e n t s m o r e s at I s F I e d 

Outpatient Satisfaction Levels and Gains a

Average Annual Improvement: 4% 

97% 94% 96% 92% 

97% 

A  B  C  D  E 

1% Gain  4% Gain  5% Gain  53% Gain  10% Gain 

2 Years  3 Years  4 Years  4 Years  2 Years 

Baldrige Award Winners, Gains, and Time Periods 

a

Seven organizations in the health care sector did not publicly report a comparable 

measure. The levels shown above reflect the last year reported before the award. 

Representative Role Models and Data 29 
Inpatient Satisfaction Levels and Gainsa

Average Annual Improvement: 3% 

97% 

90% 

95% 

89% 94% 

A  B  C  D  E 

2% Gain  10% Gain  <1% Gain  32% Gain  1% Gain 

2 Years  3 Years  4 Years  4 Years  2 Years 

Baldrige Award Winners, Gains, and Time Periods 

a

Seven organizations in the health care sector did not publicly report a comparable 

measure. The levels shown above reflect the last year reported before the award. 

• Ranking as “the nation’s no. 1 hospital for overall patient 

satisfaction” by Avatar (a patient satisfaction survey measurement 

tool administered by an independent third party) in the year 

before the organization as a whole received the Baldrige Award 

(Poudre Valley Health System’s Medical Center of the Rockies). 

The patient scores of the system’s two hospitals surpass the 

national top 10%, according to the Center for Medicare and 

Medicaid Services. (Poudre Valley Health System) 

• 725% improvement in medical-group patient satisfaction with 

urgent care and 100% improvement in overall medical-group 

patient satisfaction over 5 years (Sharp HealthCare) 

30 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
de c r e a s I n g e m p l oy e e 

t u r n ov e r a n d va c a n c y r at e s 

Decreases in Employee Turnovera

Average Annual Improvement: 15% 

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J 

3 Years  5 Years  6 Years  2 Years  6 Years  2 Years  4 Years  3 Years  6 Years  2 Years 

­38% ­42% 

­55% 

­65% ­63% 

­75% 

­15% 

­21% ­20% 

­40% 

Baldrige Award Winners and Time Periods 

a

Two organizations in the health care sector did not publicly report a comparable measure. 

These results reflect the most recent time periods reported by the organizations in the year 

each received the Baldrige Award. 

•	 Decreases in employee vacancy rates: 68% decrease over 3 

years (Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton); 

nearly 31% decrease over 2 years (North Mississippi Medical 

Center); 34% decrease over 5 years (Mercy Health System); 33% 

decrease over 4 years (AtlantiCare)

•	 Improvements in nurse vacancy, retention, or turnover rates: 

nearly 50% decrease over 2 years (Advocate Good Samaritan 

Hospital, registered nurse [RN] voluntary turnover rate); nearly 

67% decrease over 4 years (AtlantiCare, vacancy rate); nearly 

28% decrease over 3 years (Bronson Methodist Hospital, vacancy 

rate); 37% decrease over 5 years (Mercy Health System, vacancy 

rate); 33% decrease over 4 years (Poudre Valley Health System, 

vacancy rate); 67% increase over 2 years (Robert Wood Johnson 

University Hospital, retention rate); 20% decrease over 3 years 

(SSM Health Care, turnover rate) 

Representative Role Models and Data 31 
32 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 

Employees and Physicians More Satisfied 

• Nearly 19% improvement in employee satisfaction, to 4.75 out 

of 5 on a 5-point scale over 4 years (Bronson Methodist Hospital) 

• 36% improvement in employee satisfaction over 4 years. 

Satisfaction levels were equal to the Press Ganey benchmark in 

the year before the organization received the Baldrige Award. 

(Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton) 

• 11% improvement in employee satisfaction over 4 years (Saint 

Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City) 

• Nearly 47% improvement in physician satisfaction over 3 years. 

In 2005, the satisfaction of physicians was 58%; in 2007, the 

focus was changed to quality of care as perceived by physicians, 

and the physician satisfaction level reached 85% in 2008. 

(AtlantiCare) 

• Nearly 20% improvement in physician satisfaction over 2 years. 

Physicians rated the organization better than the Professional 

Research Consultants, Inc., norm for nursing care, responsiveness, 

discharge policy, and ease of scheduling. (Bronson Methodist 

Hospital) 

• 99% overall physician satisfaction—as well as satisfaction with 

ease of practice and leadership—as measured by Press Ganey, 

in the year the organization received the Baldrige Award (North 

Mississippi Medical Center) 

• National top 10% ranking, according to Management Science 

Association (an independent national firm that conducts 

employee opinion surveys), on 11 of 16 employee satisfaction 

areas, including job satisfaction, senior management group, 

communications, pay, benefits, and performance management 

(Poudre Valley Health System) 

• 90% or higher favorable responses on Avatar Physician 

Satisfaction Survey (a measurement tool administered by an 

independent third party) for 4 consecutive years, as well as a 

physician loyalty score in the national 99th percentile the year 

it received the Baldrige Award, as measured by Gallup (Poudre 

Valley Health System) 
Representative Role Models and Data 33 

Reduction in Days in Accounts 

Receivable and Patient Length of Staya 

• 57% overall decline in net days in accounts receivable over 3 

years (Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City); 24% overall decline 

in net days in accounts receivable over 5 years (Mercy Health 

System); 22% overall decline in net days in accounts receivable 

over 4 years (North Mississippi Medical Center)

• 25% overall decline in gross days in accounts receivable over 2 

years (Bronson Methodist Hospital) 

• Nearly 28% overall improvement in length of stay (Medicare) 

over 3 years (Poudre Valley Health System); nearly 16% 

overall improvement in length of stay (Medicare) over 4 years 

(AtlantiCare) 

a

Reducing length of stay, a common health-care sector quality measure, reduces hospital 

costs and also may reduce a patient’s risk of hospital-acquired infections. 

Increasing Training and Volunteer Hours 

• 260% increase in training hours per full-time equivalent (FTE) 

over 3 years (Bronson Methodist Hospital) 

• 163% increase in training hours over 6 years (Mercy Health 

System); nearly 11% increase in training hours over 2 years (SSM 

Health Care) 

• Nearly 44% increase in training hours per FTE over 2 years 

(North Mississippi Medical Center) 

• 225% increase in community-donated volunteer hours over 4 

years (Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton) 

• 86% increase in community-donated volunteer hours over 2 

years (Bronson Methodist Hospital) 
34 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 

Increasing Charity Carea 

• An increase of more than 50% in charity and uncompensated 

care over 3 years (Heartland Health) 

• More than $181 million in community benefits, including underand uncompensated care, provided in the year before it received 

the Baldrige Award (Sharp HealthCare) 

• 7% percent of total revenues donated to indigent care in 

the year the organization received the Baldrige Award. The 

organization and its parent are the leading providers of 

uncompensated care in their market area. (Baptist Hospital, Inc.) 

• $62 million in unreimbursed care for patients enrolled in 

government-assistance programs absorbed and $1.9 million in 

charity care provided in the 2 years before the organization 

received the Baldrige Award (Poudre Valley Health System) 

• 56% of the previous year’s operating margin allocated to the 

care of people who cannot pay, in the year the organization 

received the Baldrige Award (SSM Health Care) 

• 49% increase in uncompensated care costs as a percentage 

of total expenses over 3 years; more than $58 million in 

uncompensated care provided in the year before the organization 

received the Baldrige Award (North Mississippi Medical Center) 

• 88% increase in charity care over 5 years; 1.8% of hospital and 

2% of its clinic revenue allocated to charity care in the year the 

organization received the Baldrige Award (Mercy Health System) 

• 90% of the free care in its county provided in the year before 

the organization received the Baldrige Award; 25% increase in 

free care provided at cost over 4 years at AtlantiCare Regional 

Medical Center (AtlantiCare) 

a

Increasing charity care may be one way that hospitals demonstrate how they support their 

key communities. 
The Case for Baldrige:
 

Role Models in Education
 

K-12 

“Baldrige [offers] the only education Criteria that actually [enable 

a school system] to compare itself against other organizations . . . 

that show you what world-class looks like.” 

Dr. Terry Holliday, Superintendent (2002–2009) 

Iredell-Statesville Schools 

2008 Baldrige Award winner 

Iredell-Statesville Schools (I-SS) is a kindergarten-through-12thgrade (K-12) public school system located in southwestern North 

Carolina. Although I-SS’s budget and per-pupil expenditures ranked 

107 of 115 districts in North Carolina, the district outperformed 

comparative districts in academics at the state and national levels. 

I-SS supports its vision to “improve student learning” through its 

core values focusing on student learning, continuous improvement, 

management by fact, and results. Use of the Baldrige Criteria has 

promoted fact-based, data-driven decision 

making to support learning and continuous 

improvement throughout the school system. 

Several years before receiving the Baldrige 

Award, I-SS began to use a Plan-Do-Study-Act 

(PDSA) process districtwide to raise students’ 

SAT scores. When scores do not meet targets, 

the district uses the PDSA cycle to identify 

improvement opportunities and implement 

changes. Staff members review class and 

individual student data, assess progress toward 

goals, and modify improvement plans. As a result 

of the focus on continuous improvement, SAT 

scores in the district (shown in the figure below) 

steadily increased, outperforming average peer 

district, state, and national scores. The district’s 

Representative Role Models and Data 35 
High School SAT Test Scores

School Year 1 School Year 2

1080

1040

1000

960

920

880

School Year 3 School Year 4

Total Average SAT Scores

I­SS District Average Peer District Average

State Average National Average

total average SAT score of 1056 in 2008 was better than that of 

the peer district (995), the state (1007), and the nation (1017). In 

addition, in the years preceding I-SS’s receipt of the Baldrige Award, 

29 percent of students scored 3 or higher on at least one Advanced 

Placement (AP) exam during high school, almost double the national 

rate. 

I-SS also saw strong improvements in overall student achievement 

and reading. Over six years, I-SS rose from 55th to 9th place in 

student achievement among North Carolina’s more than 100 school 

districts. The year before receiving the Baldrige Award, the district’s 

students achieved 90.6 percent proficiency on the state reading 

assessment and narrowed the reading proficiency gap between 

African-American children and all students from 23 percent to 12.3 

percent. The reading proficiency gap between exceptional children 

and all students decreased from 42 percent to 21 percent during the 

same period. In closing these gaps, I-SS outperformed other districts 

in the state. 

Other results of I-SS’s improvement journey include increases in the 

graduation rate from 61 percent to 81 percent (ranking I-SS 11th 

in North Carolina) and in the average SAT score from 991 to 1056 

(ranking I-SS 7th in North Carolina), as well as a dropout rate that 

improved from one of the worst to one of the ten best in the state. 

36 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Higher Education 

“This presidential recognition honors Richland College’s serious 

commitment to and passion for student learning success and our 

vital mission of teaching, learning, and building a sustainable local 

and world community.” 

Dr. Stephen K. Mittelstet, President (1979–2009)
 

Richland College
 

2005 Baldrige Award winner
 

Richland College is a two-year community college in Dallas, Texas. 

Established in 1972, the college serves a culturally diverse student 

body that includes approximately 14,500 students pursuing college 

credits and nearly 6,000 continuing-education students. Richland 

College employs nearly 150 full-time faculty, more than 400 fulltime support staff members and administrators, and 811 part-time 

faculty members. In 2005, it became the first community college to 

receive the Baldrige Award. 

Richland College’s mission—conveyed in the statement “Teaching, 

Learning, Community Building”—is to offer programs and services 

that enable its students to achieve their educational goals and 

become lifelong learners, community builders, and global citizens. 

Unlike peer community colleges, Richland College designs the 

bulk of its programs and services to meet the needs of students 

who intend to further 

their education at a 

four-year college or 

university. A measure 

of the college’s success 

is thus the number of 

students who complete 

the core curriculum 

they need for transfer 

to four-year institutions. 

This number grew from 

500 to 1,660 over three 

years, outperforming 

three of Richland’s peer 

Representative Role Models and Data 37 
colleges. In addition, in the five years before Richland received the 

Baldrige Award, the number of credit students enrolled increased by 

approximately 16 percent, a growth rate that was higher than that for 

all local competitors in each of the five years. At the same time, on 

the four satisfaction measures that students rated as most important— 

related to class scheduling, class time convenience, variety of 

courses, and intellectual growth—Richland College surpassed the 

norm on the national Noel Levitz Student Satisfaction Survey over 

several consecutive years. 

To make getting an education as convenient as possible for its 

students (with an average age of 28), Richland College offered 

alternatives to traditional classroom scheduling, including online, 

flex-term, and fast-track classes and evening and weekend courses. 

The college also maintains a close relationship with the local 

business community to ensure that its technical, occupational, and 

workforce job skills programs meet both students’ needs and local 

employers’ needs for a skilled workforce. 

As another indicator of the success of the college and its students, 

the employment rate for students taking technical training or 

workforce development classes remained at or near 100 percent 

for the seven years before Richland College received the Baldrige 

Award. In an effort to improve its own and its peers’ results, the 

college helped establish and participates in organizations such as the 

League for Innovation in the Community College and the Continuous 

Quality Improvement Network. 

38 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Representative Role Models and Data 39 

The Proof Is in the Data, Part 5: 

The Baldrige Effect on Education 

Since 2001, when the first organizations received the Baldrige Award 

in the education category, nine organizations have been so honored; 

six are public school districts: 

• a K-12th-grade public school program located 20 miles north of New 

York City 

• an Alaska standards-based program from preschool to beyond high 

school graduation that teaches students scattered throughout 22,000 

square miles of isolated and remote areas 

• a university in the University of Wisconsin System

• a K-8th-grade public school system in a northwestern Chicago suburb

• an undergraduate-only business school within the University of Northern 

Colorado 

• a school district in Oklahoma that serves pre-K-12th-grade students

• a community college in the Dallas County Community College District

• a K-12th-grade public school system located in southwestern North 

Carolina 

• a large, ethnically diverse K-12th-grade public school system in a 

Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C. 

In the years leading up to role-model recognition as Baldrige Award 

winners, these districts and institutions achieved very favorable 

results that directly improved reading and mathematics proficiency, 

graduation rates, and turnover, as well as other measures. These 

achievements are highlighted below. 
HI g H a n d rI s I n g 

re a d I n g p r o F I c I e n c y ( k - 1 2 ) 

Reading Proficiency Ratesa

91% 94%

89%

75%

95%

A  B  C  D  E

Grades 3–8 Grade 3  Grade 3  Grade 3  Grade 4

Baldrige Award Winners and Grade Levels

a

 One district did not publicly report a comparable measure; see note 6 below. The levels 

shown above reflect the last year reported by each school district before it received the 

Baldrige Award. 

1.	 School District A closed the reading proficiency gap between 

African-American students and all students from 23% to 12% 

over 6 years and closed the gap between students with special 

needs and all students from 42% to 21% during the same period. 

2.	 For 5 years, School District B saw a 6% average annual 

improvement in grade 3 reading proficiency. 

3.	 Grade 3 reading proficiency improved in each of the 4 years 

before School District C received the Baldrige Award. That year, 

the district’s grade 2 reading proficiency reached 84% against 

the national average of 50% and gained 10 percentage points 

over the previous 2 years. 

4.	 School District D’s average student scores in reading on a 

national standardized achievement test rose from the 28th to 

the 71st percentile over 4 years. In addition, its average scores 

in language arts for the test rose from the 26th to the 72nd 

percentile over the same period. 

5.	 School District E’s grade 4 English/language arts proficiency rate 

averaged 96% for 6 consecutive years. 

6.	 While the sixth district to win the Baldrige Award to date did not 

include a similar measure on reading proficiency in its award 

40 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Representative Role Models and Data 41 

application, it reported that it exceeded the required proficiency 

rate in reading for all school levels and doubled the percentage 

of grade 3 students scoring at the “advanced” level on state 

reading assessments from 14% to 28% over the 6 years leading 

up to its Baldrige Award. 

High and Rising Mathematics Proficiency (K-12) 

• Average annual proficiency rate of 85% on a composite grades 

3–8 measure of reading and mathematics for 5 years (IredellStatesville Schools [I-SS]) 

• Average annual proficiency rate of 98% on a grade 4 

mathematics measure for 5 years (Pearl River School District) 

• 92% of grade 3 students meeting or exceeding Illinois Standards 

Achievement Test standards in mathematics (Community 

Consolidated School District 15) 

• 11% average annual improvement for 5 years on a composite 

K-12 mathematics proficiency measure (Chugach School District) 

• 94% proficiency rate on a grade 8 mathematics measure, with a 

2% average annual improvement for 5 years (Jenks Public Schools) 

High and Rising AP Enrollment and 

Exam Scores (K-12) 

• More than 66% of high school graduates (Class of 2010) took at 

least one AP course and exam, compared with 28.3% nationally 

and 43.4% in other districts in the state of Maryland; scores of 

“3” or higher were earned by 50% of these students, compared 

to 16.9% nationally and 26.4% statewide. Plus, over the decade 

preceding this district’s Baldrige Award, the number of AP exams 

taken by its high school students more than tripled and the 

number of AP exams they took that earned scores of “3” or 

higher more than doubled. (Montgomery County Public Schools) 

• Nearly 60% of grade 12 students took at least one AP course; 

scores of “3” or better were earned by 76% of those taking AP 

tests the year the district won the Baldrige Award. (Pearl River 

School District) 
42 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 

• Increase from 12.5% to 43.8% in student enrollment in AP 

courses (% of student body enrolled in at least one AP course), 

compared to 31% nationally; scores of “3” or higher were 

earned on 62% to 67% of AP tests taken, and 37% of all 

grade 12 students had earned an AP test score of “3” or better, 

compared to 13% nationally, in the year leading up to the 

district’s Baldrige Award (Jenks Public Schools) 

High and Rising Graduation Rates 

and College Attendance (K-12) 

• More than 60% of graduates earned a four-year college degree 

within 6 years (Classes of 2001 and 2003). Plus, in the year this 

district won the Baldrige Award, it boasted the highest graduation 

rate of any large school district in the nation, according to an 

Education Week study. (Montgomery County Public Schools) 

• 7% average annual improvement in cohort graduation rate (% of 

students entering grade 9 who graduate 4 years later) for 4 years, 

from nearly 64% to 81% (I-SS) 

• 93% to 95% graduation rate (% of students entering grade 12 

who graduate that year) sustained over 3 years (Jenks Public 

Schools) 

• 100% graduation rate (% of students entering grade 12 who 

graduate that year) for 5 years, a 7% average annual increase in 

students graduating with a Regents diploma (Pearl River School 

District) 

• A 6-year improvement in the dropout rate from among the worst 

in the state to among the best (3.5%) for students in grades 9–12 

(I-SS) 

• Results higher than the state average in 4 subject areas on 

Alaska’s High School Graduation Qualifying Exam (Chugach 

School District) 

• 9% average annual growth in the number of graduates attending 

college after graduation over 6 years; 96% of graduates 

attending college immediately after matriculation, and 100% 

doing so within 5 years of graduating from high school (Pearl 

River School District) 
s u c c e s s a F t e r gr a d uat I o n 

( c o l l e g I at e ) 

Graduate Employment Rates after Collegea

99% 98% 100%

A B C

8 Years Most Recent Year 5 Years

Baldrige Award Winners and Time Periods

a

The levels shown above reflect the most recent time periods reported by each institution 

before it received the Baldrige Award. 

1.	 Institution A, a community college, achieved a 100% 

employment rate for technical training/workforce development 

students and sustained this rate for 8 years. 

2.	 Institution B, an undergraduate college of business, achieved a 

98% employment or graduate school attendance rate by recent 

graduates, and more than 90% of organizations employing 

graduates rated the program as good or excellent. 

3.	 Institution C, a four-year public university, achieved a 98% jobplacement rate for recent graduates and sustained this average 

rate for 5 years. 

High and Rising Student Satisfaction (Collegiate) 

•	 Top 10% ranking nationally on 10 of 16 student satisfaction 

measures on student surveys by Educational Benchmarking, 

Inc. (EBI); for 2 years, scores in the top 1% for overall student 

satisfaction (Kenneth W. Monfort College of Business) 

Representative Role Models and Data 43 
•	 For 5 years, ranked in the top 10% of 171 schools included in 

the EBI survey for students’ rating of the value of their investment 

in their degree; tuition and fees 39% lower than the national 

average (Kenneth W. Monfort College of Business) 

•	 Survey results above the national norm on 4 of its 5 most 

important measures of student satisfaction and on 42 of 79 

survey items (Richland College) 

l o W a n d de c r e a s I n g 

t e a c H e r t u r n ov e r 

a Improvements in Teacher Turnover

Average Annual Improvement: 11% 

­2% 

­78% 

­33% 

­60% 

­4% 

­60% 

A  B  C  D  E  F

4 Years  6 Years  4 Years  4 Years  5 Years  2 Years

Baldrige Award Winners and Time Periods 

a

The improvements shown above reflect the most recent time periods reported by each 

school district before it received the Baldrige Award. 

1.	 School District A’s turnover rate for the last year reported in its 

Baldrige Award application was 12% compared with a national 

average of 20%. 

2.	 School District D’s certified staff turnover rate for the last year 

reported was 6%, compared to a national rate of 20% that year. 

3.	 School District E decreased its turnover rate to below the state 

average. The district started the last school year reported with 100% 

of staff positions filled and waiting lists for most job openings. 

4.	 School District F’s teacher turnover rate for the last year reported 

was 4.6%, compared to a national average of 16.8% that year. 

44 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Representative Role Models and Data 45 

• Voluntary faculty turnover rate of about 3% or less for 6 years 

(University of Wisconsin–Stout) 

• Overall turnover rate of 8% over 5 years (Richland College) 

High and Rising Faculty and Staff Satisfaction 

• 4% average annual improvement rate for the 3 2000–2009 

Baldrige Award-winning school districts and 3 collegiate 

institutions reporting such data. 

• Over 90% teacher satisfaction rate reported across elementary, 

middle, and high school levels for 3 years leading up to this 

district’s Baldrige Award; for employees at all school levels, 

favorable responses to survey questions regarding work 

satisfaction ranged from 91.3% to 95.5%, and favorable 

responses from non-school-based employees increased from 

78.9% to 84.8% over the same time period. (Montgomery County 

Public Schools) 

• Over 3 years, improvement from an average satisfaction rating of 

3.67 on a 5-point scale to 4.00 for all employees, based on exit 

interviews (University of Wisconsin–Stout) 

• Improvement in the levels of employee enthusiasm for work from 

an average rating of 3.64 on a 5-point scale to an average rating 

of 4.62, a 27% improvement in 3 surveys over a 7-year period 

(Jenks Public Schools) 

• 97% satisfaction rate among faculty and staff, up from 88% for 

the combined group of faculty and staff segments 3 years earlier; 

this score served as the benchmark for schools using the same 

survey. (Pearl River School District) 
The Case for Baldrige:
 

Successes in the Nonprofit Sector
 

Municipal Government 

“The real value in applying for this Award is in the rigorous 

evaluation process. The constructive feedback from Baldrige helps 

us improve the way we do business.” 

Mike Levinson, City Manager (1993–2010) 

City of Coral Springs 

2007 Baldrige Award winner 

Chartered in 1963 and once known as the “City in the Country,” the 

city of Coral Springs is located in Broward County, southern Florida. 

During the 1980s, Coral Springs was one of the fastest-growing 

cities in the nation and was home to about 132,000 people in 2006, 

making it the 13th-largest city in the state. With an annual budget 

of $135 million as of 2007, the city of Coral Springs has a councilmanager form of government: the City Commission serves as the 

board of directors, and the city manager as chief executive officer, 

with input from citizens and businesses. 

Coral Springs is a role model in its focus on customers and boasts 

high satisfaction rates as a result. For the seven years before it 

received the Baldrige Award, the city’s overall quality ratings were 

higher than 90 percent, which surpassed International City/County 

Management 

Association (ICMA) 

comparison cities. 

The percentage of 

residents who were 

satisfied with city 

services was in the 

mid- to upper 90s. 

Business owners in 

Coral Springs who 

were satisfied with 

the city increased 

46 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
from 76 percent to 97 percent over three years, and 90 percent of 

business owners said they would recommend the city to others— 

compared with the American Customer Satisfaction Index national 

average of about 75 percent. In addition, the year before it received 

the Baldrige Award, the city’s millage rate—the amount per $1,000 

that is used to calculate property taxes—was the lowest of all cities 

in Broward County. In 2006, Money magazine named Coral Springs 

among the “Best Places to Live,” and in 2005, 2006, and 2007, the 

city was named one of the 100 best communities for young people 

by America’s Promise Alliance. 

Coral Springs managed to satisfy residents and businesses while 

maintaining a strong balance sheet and cash position. For seven 

straight years, the city attained a “AAA” rating from the nation’s three 

largest bond-rating agencies—Moody’s Investor Services, Standard 

and Poor’s, and Fitch. Residents’ Overall Quality Rating for Services/Programs 

Coral Springs Quality Ratings

100%

Better 

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

Coral Springs ICMA 1 ICMA 2

ICMA 3 ICMA 4 ICMA 5

ICMA 6 ICMA 7 ICMA 8

Year 1  Year 2  Year 3  Year 4  Year 5  Year 6  Year 7 

Representative Role Models and Data 47 
U.S. Military 

“[The men and women of ARDEC] have earned distinction for our 

organization, the new high-technology Army, and the Department 

of Defense by embracing the Baldrige Criteria. . . . We [adopted the 

Baldrige Criteria] in order to become the best organization we can 

possibly be and provide the best products and support we can to 

the U.S. Warfighter.” 

Dr. Joseph A. Lannon, Director 

U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center 

(ARDEC) 

2007 Baldrige Award winner 

The U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering 

Center (ARDEC) is a specialized center within the U.S. Army 

Materiel Command. ARDEC develops 90 percent of the Army’s 

armaments and ammunition, including warheads, explosives, all 

sizes of firearms, battlefield sensors, and advanced weaponry based 

on high-power microwaves, high-energy lasers, and nanotechnology. 

A 2007 Baldrige Award winner, ARDEC has demonstrated strong 

financial results. Its overall revenue increased from $640 million 

to over $1 billion in six years. In the same period, revenue from 

non-Army customers (from other government agencies [OGAs], 

the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA], and 

Cooperative Research and Development Agreements [CRADAs]) 

grew from $60 million to $140 

million. ARDEC’s revenues 

continued to increase as a direct 

result of its Enterprise Excellence 

initiative, including its Strategic 

Management System. The 

continuous upward trend in 

non-Army funding shown in 

the figure on the next page 

demonstrates how ARDEC has 

diversified its customers in light 

of the potential for constrained 

Army budgets in the future. 

48 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Non­Army Revenue & Percentage of Total ARDEC Revenue
 

160 25

20 

Better Goal 25% 

Goal 20% 

15% 

Goal Goal 

16%

Non­Army Revenue

($ Millions)

120 

% of Total Revenue

15 

80 

10 

40 5 

0 0 Fiscal Year 

(FY) 1  FY2  FY3  FY4  FY1  FY2  FY3  FY4 

% of Total ARDEC Revenue ($M) Air Force/Navy/Marines 

Department of Defense DARPA
 

OGAs
 Industry/CRADA 

ARDEC’s overall customer satisfaction rating increased from 3.48 (on 

a 4-point scale) to 3.75 over six years, exceeding both government 

and industry benchmarks. For a three-year period, satisfaction among 

Army customers remained fairly consistent at 3.62, while satisfaction 

among non-Army customers increased from 3.82 to 3.92. This 

success grew largely out of ARDEC’s method of gathering and using 

information from its customers. Web-based customer satisfaction 

surveys provide 1,500 data points and over 60 pages of comments 

each quarter, with the results available to everyone in the workforce. 

ARDEC also has developed a number of tools to help it react 

quickly and effectively to customers’ needs. For example, the center 

formalized a Web-based tool for collecting and tracking customer 

requests with the objective to close all requests within 72 hours. 

ARDEC met that goal in five of six quarters starting the year after the 

tool was introduced. 

Representative Role Models and Data 49 
The Proof Is in the Data, Part 6:
 

The Baldrige Effect on Nonprofits
 

Since 2007, when the first organization received the Baldrige Award 

in the nonprofit category, three organizations have been so honored: 

•	 the 13th-largest city in the state of Florida

•	 a center within the U.S. Army Materiel Command that develops 90% of 

the Army’s armaments and ammunition 

•	 a federal government organization that supports multicenter clinical 

trials targeting current health issues for America’s veterans 

In the years leading up to recognition as Baldrige Award winners, 

these organizations achieved very favorable results that directly 

improved customer satisfaction, financial results, and employee 

turnover, as well as other measures. These achievements are 

highlighted below. 

s at I s F I e d c u s t o m e r s 

a Customer Satisfaction Levels

94% 97% 93%

100%

A B B C

Customer  Customer 

Group 1 Group 2

Baldrige Award Winners

a

The levels shown above reflect the last year reported by each organization before it 

received the Baldrige Award. 

1.	 For Nonprofit Organization A, customer satisfaction increased 

8% over 7 years. 

2.	 For its customer group 1, Nonprofit Organization B reported a 

28% gain in customer satisfaction over 3 years. 

50 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
3.	 For its customer group 2, Nonprofit Organization B reported 

customer satisfaction of 92% or higher for 9 consecutive years. 

4.	 For Nonprofit Organization C, customer satisfaction increased 

20% over 6 years. 

•	 90% of businesses would recommend the city as a place to do 

business, a 13% gain over 3 years. (City of Coral Springs) 

•	 75% of customer relationships were longer than 10 years. 

(Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program Clinical Research 

Pharmacy Coordinating Center [the Center]) 

•	 For 6 years, fewer than 1% of customers reported dissatisfaction. 

(U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering 

Center [ARDEC]) 

Improved Financial Results 

•	 56% increase in revenue over 6 years (ARDEC) 

•	 Cost avoidance of $3.22 billion over 5 years (ARDEC) 

•	 Budget growth of 143% over 6 years (the Center) 

•	 99% or greater performance to budget over 6 years (the Center) 

a	 sat I s F I e d , s ta b l e Wo r k F o r c e 

Workforce Satisfaction Increasesa

Average Annual Improvement: 3%

A B C

6%

16%

19%

3 Years 11 Years 3 Years

Baldrige Award Winners and Time Periods

a

The improvements shown above reflect the most recent time periods reported by each 

organization before it received the Baldrige Award. 

Representative Role Models and Data 51 
52 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 

• 53% decrease in employee turnover over 9 years (City of Coral 

Springs) 

• 29% decrease in employee turnover over 7 years (the Center) 

• 95% employee satisfaction against an average of 60% to 65% on 

the Federal Human Capital Survey in the year the Baldrige Award 

was received (City of Coral Springs) 

Excellent Service 

• 50% decrease in crime rate over 10 years (City of Coral Springs) 

• 100% of complaints closed within 7 business days (City of Coral 

Springs) 

• 50% increase in product releases over 5 years (ARDEC) 

• Less than 1 complaint per million units delivered in 8 of 9 years 

(the Center) 
What NOT to do in preparing 

a Baldrige Award applica ion! 

The Dilbert comic strip 

spoofed the Baldrige Program 

in the mid-1990s. 

t

DILBERT: © Scott Adams/Dist. by United Feature Syndicate, Inc. 

Award Winners’ 

Journeys: How Baldrige 

Led Them to Excellence 

The journeys that Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award winners 

take to attain performance excellence may vary, but the results are 

the same: recognition as best-in-class, world-class, and national role 

models. The stories in this section recount Baldrige Award winners’ 

strategies for continuous improvement and the determination that 

led to excellence. In each case, an executive determined that the 

Baldrige framework—the Criteria for Performance Excellence—was 

not just a way to foster innovation and run the business, but the way 

to achieve success and sustainability. 

Each story is followed by the lessons these executives learned as they 

negotiated the turning points on their journeys to excellence. Here 

are some common themes: 

• Be willing to accept feedback and strive for incremental 

improvement while also addressing opportunities for 

breakthrough innovation. 

• Engage your organization’s senior leaders in the journey. 

• Listen to and integrate the voice of the customer into your 

products and processes. 

• Focus on beneficial results rather than on winning the Baldrige 

Award. 

Award Winners’ Journeys: How Baldrige Led Them to Excellence 55 
• Never lose sight that your 

organization is improving even if 

you haven’t achieved your ultimate 

goals. 

• Focus on relationships and building 

trust. 

• Determine what level of 

performance your organization 

wishes to achieve and what type 

of evidence you need to collect to 

prove that you have achieved it. 

From Kernel to Crystal 

Cargill Corn Milling (CCM) could not have reached its level of 

performance excellence without the Baldrige Criteria, says Ron 

Fiala, process improvement manager of the 2008 Baldrige Award 

winner. The Criteria helped CCM see that the elements critical to its 

success are (1) leadership involvement and support, (2) relentless 

determination, (3) internal and external intellectual and cultural 

resources (such as state and local Baldrige-based award programs 

and the national Baldrige Program), and (4) the wherewithal to 

accept feedback. These are all elements of the Baldrige Criteria for 

Performance Excellence. 

CCM was established over 40 years ago, when its parent company, 

Cargill, Inc., acquired a small plant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that 

processed about 10,000 bushels of corn a day, or approximately 

12 truckloads. Today, CCM operates nine plants and processes over 

1 million bushels of corn each day. That’s equivalent to the yield of 

a cornfield the size of the state of Connecticut every year. 

To accommodate rapid increases in customers and product 

offerings, CCM had to grow. But this growth could not be just 

about continuous expansion, says Fiala. It was critical to focus 

on continuous improvement. CCM needed to improve its process 

control and ability to make high-quality products. CCM’s early 

business model was to run each plant as a separate company, with 

its own profit-and-loss statement. The plants competed not only with 

outside companies but also with other CCM plants. 

56 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
According to Fiala, CCM, like many manufacturing companies, 

started its total quality efforts in the mid-1980s because of customer 

requirements for product quality. In 1991, Cargill’s Corporate Quality 

Department created the internal Chairman’s Quality Award, which 

singled out the best-run plants in the company; the award criteria 

were based on the Baldrige Criteria. Applying to and receiving 

feedback from this internal award program helped CCM embed its 

process orientation into its culture. During this period, CCM was 

one of the most successful Cargill businesses; however, nothing lasts 

forever, especially in business. 

A Group of Plants or an Enterprise? 

After years of scrambling to keep up with growing demand, CCM 

faced overcapacity, says Fiala. This flip-flop in supply and demand 

caused syrup prices to plummet to record low levels. Everyone in the 

corn milling industry suffered, which led to several consolidations 

among competitors. This led to overcapacity in the marketplace, and 

CCM needed to reevaluate how it operated. 

The biggest difference between CCM and its competitors, Fiala says, 

was that it operated more plants in more locations. This difference 

could be a huge benefit if CCM could tap into the skills, knowledge, 

and ideas of all of its employees at every location and effectively 

share across plants. To accomplish this, CCM had to shift from being 

plant-centric to operating all plants as a single enterprise. From then 

on, only one bottom line would matter—that of the business as a 

whole, Fiala says. Adopting the Baldrige Criteria, with its holistic, 

systems framework, became the logical next step, and CCM began 

actively incorporating more Criteria concepts into its own practices, 

including the formation of best-practice teams and the sharing of 

learning across all plants. 

The Defining Moment 

At about the same time, Cargill’s internal award was renamed the 

Business Excellence Award, with the Baldrige Criteria remaining its 

foundation. The biggest change to the internal award, according to 

Fiala, was that CCM could only apply as an enterprise; individual 

Award Winners’ Journeys: How Baldrige Led Them to Excellence 57 
plants within CCM could not apply. CCM submitted an application, 

and Fiala and his colleagues were shocked when it scored poorly. 

CCM protested that the process must have been flawed, and its 

objections went all the way to the president of Cargill, Greg Page, 

who agreed to spend one entire day reviewing CCM’s award 

application. Apparently, Page did not believe CCM’s protest was 

legitimate. He simply said, “If you truly think you are better than this 

score indicates, then get to work and prove it!” 

This was the defining moment in CCM’s journey, Fiala says. “It 

took us a while, but we finally did accept the feedback to more 

systematically deploy processes across our plants.” From that 

point on, CCM wholeheartedly adopted the Baldrige Criteria: 

The company refined its strategy review process to make it more 

systematic and involve additional employees, and it created expert 

panels to integrate the voice of the customer into operations. That 

all CCM employees understand “how they fit and why they matter” 

became a goal, says Fiala. The best-practice model was improved 

to systematically identify, measure, document, and implement best 

practices, and the company put an innovation process in place to 

collect, track, and implement great ideas from all employees. Thus, 

CCM moved from merely focusing on continuous improvement to 

fostering innovation at the same time. 

In the fall of 2005, CCM’s leaders, desiring additional feedback 

about its processes from outside Cargill, decided to apply for the 

national Baldrige Award. Fiala says the feedback contained some 

excellent recommendations, and executives used the feedback to 

create the Corn Milling Leadership System, which incorporates all 

aspects of the Baldrige Criteria. In 2008, CCM received the Malcolm 

Baldrige National Quality Award. 

CCM’s ability to execute its strategy enabled it to increase its 

profitability in the ten years before it received the Baldrige Award. 

“We believe even in today’s tough economic environment, that our 

people and our systematic processes will help us weather the storm,” 

Fiala says. 

58 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Don’t expect only highs along the journey. Executives 

must be willing to make incremental improvements every day. 

Don’t reject external feedback without giving it due 

consideration. The hardest part about feedback is having the 

coura ge to accept it. 

Do make the decision to truly become a processhonoring culture. In 2002, CCM made this decision, which 

became a defining moment. 

Do accept that an outside set of eyes can point out your 

blind spots. 

Do recognize the elements critical to success: leadership 

involvement and support, determination, resources (both 

internal and external), and willingness to accept feedback. 

Award Winners’ Journeys: How Baldrige Led Them to Excellence 59 
A Return from the Brink 

According to CEO Rulon Stacey, Poudre Valley Health System 

(PVHS) began its Baldrige journey in the mid-1990s, when it was a 

community hospital serving only Fort Collins, Colorado. The hospital 

faced an employee turnover rate of 25 percent each year and had 

been led by a succession of five CEOs in four years. PVHS’s annual 

revenues were a quarter of what they had been in recent years, and 

the local health care market was demanding more integration with 

physicians. It was a critical time for the organization, says Stacey, 

as it needed a process that would allow it to set its sights high and 

continually improve. 

In 1997, with the support of the Board of Directors, executives began 

a review of different tools that supported continuous improvement 

in patient care; PVHS chose the Baldrige Criteria for Performance 

Excellence. 

PVHS first submitted a Baldrige application in 2000, after convening 

teams focused on each of the seven Criteria categories. Each team 

wrote its own section of the application, and “we stuck these 

sections together,” Stacey says. Initially, he added, the Baldrige effort 

60 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
was something employees worked on once a year, outside their “real 

jobs,” and they looked only at their assigned categories. 

Still, Stacey says, PVHS really expected to “win” the Baldrige Award 

early on. “We were used to winning awards, and certainly, we 

thought, Baldrige was no different. . . . We were quite shocked to get 

our first feedback report and find we were only in Scoring Band 2 

[out of 8].” 

A New Approach: Systematic Improvement 

The year 2004 was a turning point. As Stacey explains, PVHS 

realized that for Baldrige to work for the organization, it needed to 

make Baldrige “how it does business.” First, PVHS created a Quality 

Improvement Department to establish a systematic and integrated 

approach to performance excellence that crossed calendars and 

Criteria categories. Then seven performance excellence teams were 

trained on the Baldrige Criteria categories and worked to identify 

gaps in the organization. Senior leaders served either as team leaders 

or as team members. Teams also included people from across 

facilities, disciplines, and customer groups. 

Stacey says that, each year, PVHS rigorously assessed its progress 

through the Baldrige application process and the feedback report it 

received. Senior leaders reviewed the reports and set the direction 

for the seven performance excellence teams. The teams each 

developed an annual action plan detailing improvements to work on 

during the year ahead. The Quality Improvement Department then 

worked with each of the performance excellence teams to develop 

an action plan aligned with the organization’s strategic plan. 

According to Stacey, in response to Baldrige feedback, the 

Leadership Team has been instrumental in deploying PVHS’s vision, 

mission, and values across the organization through its Global Path 

to Success system. In addition, the team set up a process for taking 

corrective action when systemwide balanced scorecard measures 

are not performing to goal. Thanks to the Strategy Team’s numerous 

cycles of improvement, the strategic planning timeline was aligned 

with leadership retreats and the capital and operational budget 

“A common question 

we get is, how much 

productive time do 

you lose to Baldrige? 

If you’re asking that 

question, you don’t 

get it yet. Baldrige 

has to be how you 

run your business. . . . 

People want to know 

how we can afford 

to do Baldrige. We 

tell them, ‘You can’t 

afford not to.’” 

—Poudre Valley 

Health System CEO 

Rulon Stacey 

Award Winners’ Journeys: How Baldrige Led Them to Excellence 61 
cycles. This team also rolled out personal goal cards as a way of 

linking individual employees’ actions to the organization’s strategic 

objectives. And the team continues to work on new ways to involve 

physicians in strategic planning. 

Based on Baldrige feedback, PVHS now has a systematic approach 

to tracking, trending, and sharing the voice of the customer to 

determine how the organization is doing in customer service and 

where it can improve. PVHS also changed the way it looks at patient 

satisfaction data. The Knowledge Management Team continues to 

refine the balanced scorecard process, adding definition sheets that 

standardize what PVHS is measuring and how it is measured. This 

team also led the transition to an electronic balanced scorecard 

and to the use of a national database for risk- and severity-adjusted 

clinical outcomes. The Workforce Team established and deployed 

behavior standards, launched “stay” interviews with current 

employees (moving away from “exit” interviews with departing 

employees), instituted performance reviews for volunteers, and 

expanded a peer-to-peer coupon program ($3 coupons for the gift 

shop, local businesses, and cafeteria that peers award each other for 

actions supporting standards and values) to include volunteers and 

physicians. The Process Improvement Team established the Business 

Decision Support Process to analyze and prioritize proposals for new 

service offerings as well as major capital projects. Stacey says the 

overall result has been continuous, systematic improvement driven 

by the Baldrige Criteria. 

In 2008, PVHS received the Baldrige Award. “Baldrige has paid 

off for us,” says Stacey. But PVHS certainly does not consider its 

Baldrige journey over. Even as a Baldrige Award winner, PVHS found 

that its 2008 Baldrige feedback report included 32 opportunities for 

improvement, and the organization was already working on those it 

had identified even before the report arrived, he adds. 

62 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Don’t let Baldrige become an activity your organization 

does on the side. As Stacey remembers it, “Initially, Baldrige was 

something people did once a year, looking at each category in a 

silo, separate from their ‘real jobs.’” This approach did not work. 

Don’t overemphasize the award. At one point in PVHS’s 

journey, says Stacey, “There was a perception among employees 

and physicians that this was just one more award we wanted to 

add to our résumé . . . [so] motivation dropped when we found 

out that we were not a winner.” However, Stacey adds, “It was so 

much more motivational to engage our workforce in providing 

world-class care instead of asking for their help to win another 

award.” 

Don’t give up. “There were lots of times in our journey 

when we questioned whether it was worth it,” says Stacey. 

“We got disappointed, even angry, and staff seemed to lose 

motivation. But we persisted and focused on improvements we 

had already made and improvements we wanted to make.” 

Don’t “cram for the test.” Don’t do Baldrige by simply 

memorizing the “right” answers before the Baldrige examiners 

visit your site as part of their evaluation, advises Stacey, “Live it!” 

Do get buy-in from the top. As PVHS found, direction and 

empowerment from leadership is essential. 

Do consider Baldrige-related activities productive time. “A 

common question we get is, how much productive time do you 

lose to Baldrige?” says Stacey. “If you’re asking that question, you 

don’t get it yet. Baldrige has to be how you run your business.” 

Do make improvement your main focus. Says Stacey, 

“We realized that a lot of our focus had shifted to ‘winning the 

award.’” When the main focus shifted back to improving, PVHS 

began seeing the beneficial results that led it to the Baldrige 

Award. 

Award Winners’ Journeys: How Baldrige Led Them to Excellence 63 
“One of the most 

interesting things 

we’ve learned from 

the whole Malcolm 

Baldrige experience 

is that when a 

company has a 

vision, a mission, and 

well-defined values, 

it has the foundation 

necessary to operate 

in any environment.” 

—MESA CEO Terry May 

A Baldrige Cinderella Story 

Terry May, CEO, president, and founder of MESA Products, 

Inc., characterizes his small company’s journey to performance 

excellence as a Cinderella story. Founded in 1979 with just a single 

client, MESA today is headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with five 

branch offices in Tallahassee, Florida; Houston, Texas; Huntington 

Beach, California; Fort Worth, Texas; and Wapakoneta, Ohio. The 

company provides engineering, installation, and materials for 

cathodic protection systems (a process that prevents metal structures, 

particularly underground hydrocarbon pipelines and tanks, from 

corroding). 

Growth, Quality, and Difficulties 

In MESA’s early days, it focused on engineering and technical 

services. As the organization grew, May added installation services 

and materials. These expansions during a time when the industry was 

depressed allowed MESA to maintain steady, profitable growth. But 

May also wanted his company to deliver a “quality product at a fair 

price,” so he focused on that concept throughout the company’s first 

decade, despite the difficulties he faced in securing bank loans to 

keep the company operating. 

“In the early eighties, we were always concerned about how 

we’d survive, but there was always some level of optimism,” says 

May. “The turning point for us was one job that threw off a lot of 

cash. Once it looked to the banks that we didn’t need the money, 

they were eager to loan it to us. That was the first time we could 

comfortably think we were going to make it.” Then, in 1989, Inc. 

magazine recognized MESA in its “Top 500” list of the fastestgrowing private companies in the United States. 

As the company continued growing and taking on larger projects, 

May’s frustration kept pace. “With all that going on, we started 

screwing up more. No big blunders, but by now, the cost of those 

mistakes was becoming greater and had more impact. That’s when 

I first became interested in the formal concepts of quality,” says 

May. He started reading books on quality and subsequently led 

64 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
MESA through two unsuccessful 

attempts at Total Quality 

Management. Following 

successful implementation of 

ISO 9002 certification, May 

became aware of the Baldrige 

Award. In 2002, while on 

jury duty (during breaks) and 

equipped with a laptop and a 

Criteria booklet, May started 

typing responses to the Criteria 

questions. “By the time jury duty 

ended, I had 15 typewritten 

pages and figured, how much 

harder could it be to finish?” 

Working alone on nights and 

weekends, his subsequent 

quest to finish answering all 

the Criteria questions took 

him another 250 hours: “What 

was so appealing is that, from 

the Criteria, I saw many things that MESA was already doing or 

discussing—strategy, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, 

vision, values. Baldrige just seemed to wrap all that into one neat 

little package.” 

Getting Better with Each Feedback Report 

A month after he submitted the application, May told his leadership 

team what he’d done. The response was, “What’s Baldrige?” While 

MESA’s leadership team didn’t see the value yet, May says he saw 

it as an accomplishment that he’d told the entire MESA story in 35 

pages. But he was not pleased when he received the feedback report 

written by a team of Baldrige examiners. May admits he was initially 

angered by the opportunities for improvement (known as OFIs) in 

the report, but after he reread them, he started to think the feedback 

could help his company. “After tossing out 30 percent of the OFIs 

because they had no immediate value to MESA,” he recalls, he 

realized “there was value in what the report said.” 

Award Winners’ Journeys: How Baldrige Led Them to Excellence 65 
In 2003, May got the rest of the MESA management involved in the 

Baldrige process, wrote another Baldrige Award application, and 

earned a site visit. But he says that his company was not prepared for 

that visit by Baldrige examiners. “We had a false sense of where we 

were,” he says. 

By 2004, MESA had addressed the OFIs from its previous feedback 

report, written another application, and earned another site visit. This 

time May involved almost everyone in the company in the process. 

“I was putting pressure on people, sending them to Baldrige training, 

and simultaneously applying for the Oklahoma Quality Award. But 

our Baldrige experience was a disaster.” 

In 2005, after addressing the new OFIs and writing another 

application, May and his company received another site visit, but 

it did not receive the Baldrige Award. “The feedback was that we’d 

improved, but we just weren’t there yet,” says May. On the positive 

side, he adds, everyone recognized the value of the process, as 

improvements were evident and producing results. 

In 2006, after deepening the commitment of the senior management 

team to the Baldrige process and addressing the OFIs, MESA again 

submitted a Baldrige application and received a site visit. This time, 

the company finally received the Baldrige Award. In the same year, 

MESA also received the Oklahoma Quality Award. 

May learned that being a Baldrige Award winner did not mean his 

company had reached the end of its improvement journey: “Along 

with the announcement that we’d won the Baldrige Award came 

another 50 OFIs,” he says. “So we’re addressing those and will 

continue to improve.” 

66 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Don’t set expectations for a quick journey to 

performance excellence. MESA’s early expectations were 

unrealistic, says May—a certain recipe for frustration, 

discouragement, and failure. 

Don’t focus just on winning an award. “Every year we 

didn’t win, we’d still gotten better as a company,” says May. He 

recommends focusing on the positives, addressing the OFIs in 

feedback reports, and never losing sight that the organization is 

improving throughout the journey. 

Do things your way; there is no magic formula. “Our 

method was trial and error—and it took us five years,” says 

May. “As a small company, our resources are limited. But 

although we may not do things the way others do, we find 

ways to get things done.” 

Do be patient, and do your best. One trick is not to call 

this process “Baldrige,” says May. “We needed this to become 

part of our daily job, so we called what we were doing ‘The 

MESA Way.’” 

Award Winners’ Journeys: How Baldrige Led Them to Excellence 67 
A Baldrige Transformation
 

Iredell-Statesville Schools (I-SS) was formed in 1992 from the 

merger of a county school system and a city school system. By 

the 2000-2001 school year, the school board had initiated an 

investigation of the low-performing school system based on reports 

of financial mismanagement. A posting on the school system’s Web 

page subsequently made over 70 negative findings public. The Board 

of Education eventually fired the superintendent and conducted a 

search for a new one. 

Terry Holliday was selected for the position in the fall of 2002. 

According to Holliday, the Board of Education offered him the job 

because of his Baldrige-based plan for turning around the system: 

“They said I was the only one who had ‘a plan.’ The plan I had 

presented to them was based on the Baldrige Criteria. The plan I 

presented was about changing the system from a teaching- and 

adult-centered system to a learning-based system.” 

At the start of Holliday’s 

tenure, he says, “We 

had a school system that 

was broke, a budget 

that was about $2.5 

million over revenue, 

below-state-average 

student achievement, low 

community expectations, 

a community that did not 

trust the school board 

or the superintendent, 

deteriorating school 

facilities, and a fastgrowing population due 

to suburban sprawl.” 

However, Holliday 

embarked on the journey 

toward success for I-SS 

confident that he had the 

68 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
resources he needed to address the challenges: “We did have one 

thing—great staff and a school board that wanted change!” He adds 

that the system’s new vision was a key driver of the improvement 

journey. “Our vision that we adopted by the end of the first year was 

very simple and one that everyone could understand,” says Holliday. 

“We wanted to become a ‘top-ten’ school system in North Carolina 

as measured by student learning outcomes.” 

From Blame to a Focus on Learning 

At first, Holliday faced a clash of cultures: “Very quickly it became 

evident that there was an impending conflict between the leadership 

beliefs/values as espoused by the Baldrige Criteria and the existing 

culture in our community.” The community of parents and teachers 

tended to blame others (especially the superintendent and school 

leaders) for failures, he says. In addition, the organizational culture 

focused on what was best for adults, not what was best for learning. 

“Decisions were often made according to ‘that’s the way we have 

always done it around here’ rather than based on data,” Holliday 

says. He also faced mistrust of new programs or innovations, 

such as the plan, do, study, act (PDSA) continuous improvement 

methodology, Holliday added. 

Beginning the Baldrige journey “with a few strikes against us,” 

Holliday knew it was extremely important that he, along with the 

Board of Education and other senior leaders, focus on a passion 

for learning, including the need to reignite this passion in adults. “I 

truly believe parents and teachers want all children to be successful. 

They just do not know how to help the children reach success. . . . 

We have to believe that we can ignite a passion for learning in 

everyone.” He added, “Actions must reveal a focus on learning rather 

than a focus on adults by always looking at how we can help each 

other become more effective in helping more children learn.” 

As I-SS started its Baldrige journey, Holliday also knew that having 

everyone read the Criteria would not mean “they would instantly 

become systems thinkers and agents of change.” Instead, he 

understood that he had to start with small changes and produce early 

successes to bring people along on the journey. 

Award Winners’ Journeys: How Baldrige Led Them to Excellence 69 
During the system’s first six months of using the Baldrige framework, 

Holliday and other I-SS leaders learned that they had to address 

the problem of external blame. They also had to create a sense 

of urgency for change among those staff members who were 

complacent about mediocre student performance. I-SS leaders 

learned that facts alone do not change perceptions; nor do fear 

or force result in lasting change in teachers’ beliefs or practices 

regarding student learning. According to Holliday, “We could tell 

our staff that over 2,000 children drop out of school every day; 

however, it does not mean anything until they see a face to go with 

the dropout statistic.” 

Three Questions 

Early in his tenure, Holliday visited all school sites and hosted 

staff meetings in each of the school system’s communities. At the 

meetings, he always asked the same three questions: 

• What is getting in the way of student learning? 

• What do you need to help all children be successful? 

• What do you expect from the superintendent?

By asking the first question, about barriers to student learning, 

Holliday was indirectly letting all staff know the direction in which 

the school system was moving—toward increasing student learning. 

He found that the question elicited some people’s belief that not 

all children could learn. “If you do not believe you can reach your 

destination, then no one will take the trip, much less plan for the 

trip,” he says. It also became clear to Holliday that staff members 

were prone to blame the lack of student success on external factors. 

“Apathetic and unmotivated students” was the number-one response 

to the question, and another frequently cited reason was lack of 

parental support. 

The purpose of the second question, about staff needs, was to 

align resources to the mission statement, according to Holliday. In 

response, staff members ranked one of the highest needs as holding 

children and parents accountable for attendance. It was evident 

70 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
from the student attendance percentage that the school system had 

a problem in this area, particularly in comparison to other school 

systems. 

The crucial third question—what do you expect from the 

superintendent?—was intended to help Holliday find out how he 

could restore trust in the superintendent’s position. The responses 

revealed that the staff wanted the superintendent to be visible, 

particularly in the schools. They wanted the superintendent to attend 

student events and be supportive of all programs. They also wanted 

the superintendent to communicate openly and honestly. 

Achieving the Vision 

After the meetings, Holliday started tackling school attendance. He 

created a district leadership team to model an improvement process. 

“We never called it Baldrige,” he says. “We just said we were trying 

to address a problem that teachers had said was a huge barrier to 

student learning.” Within a year, the school system had improved its 

attendance rate from one of the lowest in the state to the statewide 

average. Within three years, I-SS was one of the top-three school 

systems in the state, and the district maintained that status for the 

next four years. 

The key learning point for Holliday and the other senior leaders 

was that relationships in the school system had to be repaired 

for it to move forward. Embarking on a listening tour, including 

going directly to employees who have direct contact with the 

most important customers—the students—was the first step toward 

addressing this need. After that, leaders modeled small behavior 

changes, starting with the attendance PDSA; they published the 

early positive results of this effort, thus creating a strong motivator 

for improvement. “Only after numerous small behavior changes 

and success did we start to see people reframing their beliefs,” says 

Holliday. “We have gone from having very few staff understand or 

support our model for continuous improvement to having over 80 

percent support.” 

“Only after 

numerous small 

behavior changes 

AND success did 

we start to see 

people reframing 

their beliefs. . . . 

We have gone from 

having very few 

staff understand or 

support our model 

for continuous 

improvement to 

having over 80 

percent support.” 

— Terry Holliday, 

I-SS Superintendent 

(2002–2009) 

Award Winners’ Journeys: How Baldrige Led Them to Excellence 71 
By 2008, when it received the Baldrige Award, I-SS had achieved 

its vision of performing among the top-ten school systems in North 

Carolina. At the same time, it maintained a per-pupil expenditure 

rate that was at least $700 below the state average, ranking it among 

the bottom-ten school systems in North Carolina for cost. According 

to Holliday, I-SS achieved these financial results by constantly 

working to improve the school system’s operations; save money in 

such areas as energy, overtime, and workers’ compensation; and 

reduce costs through improvements in such areas as bus discipline, 

child nutrition, custodial services, and maintenance services. The 

system also benefited from collaboration with faith-based and 

community partners, gaining over $17 million in grant funding over 

six years. 

72 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Don’t call it Baldrige (at least at the beginning of your 

journey). If you are dealing with a community that mistrusts 

change and innovation based on its experiences, convey 

the favorable results rather than labeling the improvement 

methodology. 

Don’t allow school staff members to give up on children, 

and don’t let students continue to fail until they become 

dropouts. 

Do focus on relationships and building trust among 

teachers and other school stakeholders. Listen and learn. Then 

address negative beliefs about and blame for student learning 

by modeling the change you want to see: model a learningcentered approach and showcase the results it can achieve. 

Do create a passion for learning, reigniting this passion 

among adults. As a school leader, continue to fight the fight. 

Award Winners’ Journeys: How Baldrige Led Them to Excellence 73 
Response to a Wake-Up Call
 

Texas Nameplate Company, Inc., is a privately held family business 

that produces custom nameplates in small, frequent orders primarily 

for small businesses nationwide and abroad. These identification 

tags and labels display important usage and safety information for 

products ranging from high-pressure valves and oil field equipment 

to computers. Texas Nameplate became a two-time Baldrige Award 

winner in 2004; the Dallas, Texas-based small business first received 

this national distinction in 1998—the smallest business ever to be so 

honored. 

Despite the success that led Texas Nameplate to its 1998 Baldrige 

Award, CEO Dale Crownover says the company soon faced a 

confidence-shaking crisis—a “wake-up call.” “Let ‘the wake-up call’ 

be a metaphor for any unexpected event that challenges a company 

to its core,” says Crownover. “Insurance may make you financially 

whole; but the trust and confidence that is lost may take years 

to recover.” 

74 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
This insight led Crownover and other Texas Nameplate executives 

to Lesson 1 of the 12 lessons they cited at a Quest for Excellence 

conference presentation describing the company’s most 

recent improvement journey: “Always remember where you’re 

coming from. Keeping your responses to the Baldrige Criteria’s 

Organizational Profile [the preface to the Criteria, which asks about 

your organization and its situation] current and readily accessible is 

very useful, in good times and bad.” 

Milestones on a New Journey 

Soon after the crisis, Crownover and a senior employee met for a 

long working lunch and arrived at a two-part vision of the company’s 

future: first, embed the Baldrige Criteria into a company intranet 

to document progress going forward, and second, embed the next 

Baldrige Award application into a company intranet to make it easier 

to chart the organization’s progress and apply again. 

During the long afternoon talk, the pair raised a number of critical 

questions for their company but did not try to answer them 

immediately. “Arriving at our shared vision and knowing the deeper 

questions involved was the second milestone,” says Crownover. “So 

Lesson 2 is ‘Always envision where you want to go and, at the least, 

begin questioning what you really want by going there.’ ” 

Crownover arrived at a third milestone upon facing reluctance and 

resistance from some employees who were not enthusiastic about 

pursuing the Baldrige Award again. Yet Crownover and company 

“decided not only to break out of the traditional management silo, 

but also to begin methodically to break down the other silos as 

well.” Lesson 3 was therefore as follows: “Expecting reluctance and 

resistance, do not retreat into your own silo. Rather, recognize your 

role as change agent within your organization.” 

Award Winners’ Journeys: How Baldrige Led Them to Excellence 75 
Foundations for Change 

Texas Nameplate’s fourth lesson—find wise coaches and listen to 

what they say—was inspired by Crownover’s experiences in Baldrige 

examiner training and service as a judge for the Malcolm Baldrige 

National Quality Award, through which he refined his knowledge of 

performance excellence. He found that the annual training sessions 

“were our fourth milestone, for they inspired us to stay the course in 

spite of continuing reluctance and resistance to change.” 

By the end of 2001, Texas Nameplate had implemented The New 

Hotrod, an intranet-based, embedded Criteria tool that gave 

Crownover and other employees “a daily systems perspective on 

our business.” The organization soon made significant changes to its 

information system via more than 25 infrastructure projects. Lesson 5 

summed up new learning at that milestone: Know what the pros and 

the cons are for changing your technology. Go with the pros, and 

avoid the cons as much as possible. 

The organization’s sixth milestone on its post-1998 improvement 

journey was the recognition that traditional management approaches 

sometimes thwarted its progress toward change. Nonetheless, 

among the 25-plus projects under way, one significantly shifted the 

power structure. Called the Just Earning Time and Saving Resources 

(JETS) program, it was launched to help avoid layoffs while keeping 

workforce skill levels high during an expected downturn in 

business after September 11, 2001. Through JETS, Texas Nameplate 

compensated eligible coworkers with time off for meeting production 

goals. The success of JETS underscored Lesson 6: Push forward with 

a commitment to change what you need or want to change. 

Success and Trust 

Learning the JETS lesson brought Crownover and his company to 

Lesson 7: Know what “success” means to you and what type of 

evidence you need to collect to prove to yourselves and others that 

you’ve achieved it. Texas Nameplate applied this lesson to a quest 

for “a way of speaking about success without having to rely on the 

traditional, bottom-line financial approach.” Using the Baldrige 

Criteria booklet’s scoring guidelines, the company decided on 

76 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
the scoring level it wanted to aim for, converted the descriptors 

of organizational maturity at that level into eight conditions, and 

adopted them as its operational definition of “success.” Next, the 

company determined what type of evidence it would collect to 

see whether it had fulfilled the eight conditions. In particular, the 

organization collected significant, actionable evidence. 

Texas Nameplate’s eighth milestone on its improvement journey 

was incorporating its strategic plan into The New Hotrod: “Beyond 

revitalizing the strategic planning process itself, we created a Web 

page so everyone could see the plan at the click of a button.” This 

improvement led Texas Nameplate to Lesson 8: Work with facts 

made evident through your data collection efforts, and link them to a 

strategic plan that is constantly displayed. 

Texas Nameplate has identified its form of leadership as one of 

making decisions based on shared insights. For example, the 

decision to prepare for a 2004 Baldrige Award application was based 

on senior leaders’ insight that doing so would provide many helpful 

opportunities. Yet Crownover and others found that such “insights 

were often delayed, if not blocked completely, by hard-to-dispel 

fears based on unexamined oversights.” They also found that behind 

such oversights was distrust, which may have been the lingering 

consequence of the company’s jolting “wake-up call.” Going 

forward, Crownover and colleagues reminded each other that “Fear 

is useless; what is needed is trust.” Lesson 9 emerged as follows: 

Facts based on evidence may give you choices, and strategies based 

on facts and reasoning about them may give you judgments, but 

when you are making decisions, patiently wait for insights, fearlessly 

address oversights, and find someone you trust to help you do it. 

Texas Nameplate’s Lesson 10—trust your coworkers as much as 

you trust yourselves—follows Lesson 9 closely and also relates to 

collaborating on a Baldrige application. According to Crownover, 

his company’s executives came to realize that The New Hotrod 

would be even more effective if they involved coworkers in its 

development. “We wanted to tell our stories to each other first before 

we tried to tell them to others in any future Baldrige application. 

Personal Web pages show how much we trust each other.” 

Award Winners’ Journeys: How Baldrige Led Them to Excellence 77 
“You literally can’t 

lose in the Baldrige 

process, because you 

will get the feedback 

report whether you 

win the award or not. 

One should not apply 

to win the Baldrige 

Award but to get the 

feedback and use 

the information to 

obtain and sustain 

high levels of 

performance.” 

—Texas Nameplate 

CEO Dale Crownover 

The Feedback Report and Beyond 

The 11th lesson for Texas Nameplate was simply to stand by its 

decision to apply for the Baldrige Award. The company found 

reassurance in knowing that “you literally can’t lose in the Baldrige 

process, because you will get the feedback report whether you 

win the award or not.” Also important to Texas Nameplate was 

to determine its success in embedding “the Baldrige way” into its 

business. “It’s worth the risk to find out how well you’ve done it,” 

says Crownover. 

Texas Nameplate’s final milestone on its improvement journey 

emerged as employees read the feedback report written by Baldrige 

examiners. “Certainly, reading about our strengths was confirming 

and edifying. They ‘got it.’ And, to be fair, so did we. Reading our 45 

opportunities for improvement encouraged us. We will include many 

of these opportunities in our strategic planning over the next several 

years.” 

As the company reached the last milestone of one improvement 

journey, it approached the first milestone of the next. At the juncture 

of the two journeys was one final question: “How do we know we 

are making the right decision?” In response, Crownover put forth his 

company’s Lesson 12: “The telltale sign of knowing you are making 

the right decision is not whether you are happy with what you have 

already done along the current journey’s level, but whether you are 

enthusiastically ready to pursue the next level.” 

Following the 2010 Baldrige Award cycle, Crownover stated, “We 

did not win Baldrige in 2010 but did receive a site visit. Our goal 

was obtained. Disappointed we did not win? Not really. Would we 

have liked to have won? Of course. We received our feedback last 

month, and it was great. We are already working on the gaps.” 

78 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Don’t retreat into a silo when facing resistance from 

employees about a Baldrige improvement plan. Rather, recognize 

your role as change agent within your organization. 

Don’t assume all organizations must strive for the same 

“success.” Instead, determine what level of performance your 

organization wishes to achieve and what type of evidence you need 

to collect to prove to yourselves and others that you’ve achieved it. 

Don’t let distrust among coworkers deter organizational 

decision making. Patiently wait for insights and fearlessly address 

oversights. 

Do keep your responses to the Baldrige Criteria’s 

Organizational Profile, which asks questions about your 

organization and its situation, current and readily accessible in 

good and bad times. 

Do envision where you want to go and, at the least, begin 

questioning what you really want by going there. 

Do make the decision to apply for the Baldrige Award—and 

recognize that your decision will provide many opportunities to 

benefit. 

Do study the pros and cons of major changes (e.g., in 

technology), and avoid the cons as much as possible. 

Do stay committed to pushing forward with change. 

Do reach out to receive training and coaching from Baldrige 

practitioners. 

Do link the collection of organizational performance data 

with strategic planning. 

Do trust your coworkers as much as you trust yourself in 

preparing a Baldrige Award application. 

Do be ready to pursue a new improvement journey even 

after you receive a Baldrige Award—taking your success to the 

next level. 

Award Winners’ Journeys: How Baldrige Led Them to Excellence 79 

The Criteria: 

Framework for 

Performance Excellence 

The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence are a set of 

questions in seven interrelated areas (known as categories) that 

guide you in assessing your organization’s performance. For over 

20 years, leaders of role-model U.S. organizations in all sectors— 

manufacturing, service, small business, education, health care, 

and nonprofit—have used this framework to consider all aspects 

of running their organizations and to drive improvement. The 

Criteria help these leaders align processes and resources; improve 

communication, productivity, and effectiveness; and achieve 

2 

Strategic 

Planning 

1 

Leadership 

3 

Customer 

Focus 

5 

Workforce 

Focus 

7 

Results 

6 

Operations 

Focus 

4 

Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management 

Organizational Profile: 

Environment, Relationships, and Strategic Situation 

The Criteria: Framework for Performance Excellence 81 
strategic goals. Without being prescriptive, the Criteria focus on 

critical aspects of management that contribute to success. 

Responding to the Criteria questions is the beginning of a Baldrige 

journey toward performance excellence. While answering them 

fully is not necessarily easy, it will help you see your organization’s 

strengths, opportunities for improvement, and gaps more clearly—so 

you can move forward with well-informed actions. 

Category 1: Leadership 

Leadership, the first of the Baldrige framework’s seven categories, has 

two parts—known as “items”—covering senior leadership in the first, 

and governance and societal responsibilities in the second. The first item 

asks questions designed to help you examine how your personal actions 

as an executive guide and sustain your organization. For example, 

•	 How	do	senior	leaders	set	your	

organization’s vision and values? 

•	 How	do	senior	leaders	deploy	your	

organization’s vision and values 

through your leadership system, to 

the workforce, to key suppliers and 

partners, and to customers and other 

stakeholders, as appropriate? 

These questions—like those in all the Criteria categories—are 

designed to be both timely and timeless. After all, across industries 

today, leaders must convey their organizations’ visions and values in 

the face of expanding or converging relations with partners, subunits, 

suppliers, and new stakeholders, and amid mergers, acquisitions, 

and shifting alliances in the global economy. Additionally, in 

the education sector, superintendents need to maintain strong 

partnerships with school boards. And hospital executives must 

strengthen their partnerships with physicians in order to succeed. 

How can the Criteria questions help you? Answering questions such 

as the ones above will tell you whether you have systematic, effective 

methods in these areas; whether all employees and work areas use 

these methods; and whether the methods are integrated with those in 

other key areas of your organization. 

82 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
The Criteria: Framework for Performance Excellence 83 

Ethics and Sustainability: The 

Foundation for Role-Model Results 

Visionary leaders embrace the need for ethical behavior and 

stakeholder trust, understanding that these responsibilities drive and 

support other results. From surveys on ethical behavior and integrity 

among management and the workforce, to training on ethics, the 

tracking of ethical breaches and violations, codes of conduct, 

and compliance with regulations and standards, Baldrige Award 

winners look for opportunities to exceed requirements and to excel 

in areas of legal and ethical behavior. They also contribute to the 

sustainability of their environmental, social, and economic systems, 

with approaches to reduce energy usage, emissions, and chemical 

usage, as well as to recycle waste. In addition, Baldrige Award 

winners have tracked and surpassed their goals for safety awareness 

and contributions to the United Way and other community 

organizations, among other social responsibility measures. Following 

is a sampling of their results: 
84 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 

•	 95%	improvement	in	employees	feeling	that	their	

management acts with integrity, according to survey 

results, over 4 years. This represents an annual improvement 

of nearly 32%. (CCM, Baldrige Award winner in 

manufacturing sector) 

•	 Performance	better	than	the	best-in-class	benchmark

(Hay companies’ 20 high-performing organizations) for 

the measure “employee confidence in leadership,” a 10% 

overall improvement over 4 years (MEDRAD, Inc., two-time 

Baldrige Award winner in manufacturing sector) 

•	 2,300%	overall	increase	in	employees	attending	ethics	

training over 4 years (Motorola, Inc., Commercial, 

Government and Industrial Solutions Sector [CGISS; 

now Motorola Solutions], Baldrige Award winner in 

manufacturing sector) 

•	 95%	level	of	agreement	from	employees	responding	to	

an ethics survey item, “I am expected to maintain a high 

standard of ethics,” in the most recent year data were 

reported (DynMcDermott Petroleum Operations Company 

[now DM Petroleum Operations Company], Baldrige Award 

winner in service sector) 

•	 100%	improvement over 4 years on its measure of ethical 

incident occurrences, improving from an average of 1.5 in 

2003 to zero in 2006 (MESA Products, Inc., Baldrige Award 

winner in small business sector) 

•	 Steady	favorable	results	on	employee	perceptions	of	

leadership’s ethical behavior, from a rating of 4.5 out of 

5 in 2007 to 4.6 in 2009, according to an annual employee 

survey (the Center, Baldrige Award winner in nonprofit 

sector) 

•	 94%	employee	rating	on	leadership’s	ethics	and	integrity,	

according to survey results, in the most recent year data 

were reported. That level improved from 91% the previous 

year. (City of Coral Springs, Baldrige Award winner in 

nonprofit sector) 
The Criteria: Framework for Performance Excellence 85 

•	 Sustained	low	rate	of	zero	to	1	on	its	measure	of	fraud	or	

ethics violations by employees for the 5 years leading up 

to its Baldrige Award (ARDEC, Baldrige Award winner in 

nonprofit sector) 

•	 88%	reduction	in	emissions over 7 years. In addition, 

57% of nonhazardous waste recycled in the year before 

it received the Baldrige Award. (Motorola, Inc. CGISS, 

Baldrige Award winner in manufacturing sector) 

•	 85%	reduction	in	plate	material	waste over 7 years (Clarke 

American Checks [now Harland Clarke], Baldrige Award 

winner in manufacturing sector) 

•	 7%	annual	improvement	in	nonmetallic	recycling for 4 

years (PRO-TEC, Baldrige Award winner in small business 

sector) 

•	 50%	reduction	in	volatile	organic	compound	emissions

over 3 years (Branch-Smith Printing Division, Baldrige 

Award winner in small business sector) 

•	 31%	reduction	in	amount	of	hazardous	chemicals	and	

74% increase in use of environmentally friendly waterbased formulations over 4 years (Stoner, Baldrige Award 

winner in small business sector) 

•	 75th	percentile	in	a	national	Press	Ganey	comparison	on	

its measure of employee trust in senior leaders (Heartland 

Health, Baldrige Award winner in health care sector) 

•	 Level	of	99%	or	better	in	common	goal	of	employees	

completing ethics training (8 of 11 Baldrige Award winners 

in the health care sector with this result) 

•	 100%	employees	trained	on	ethical	behavior and zero 

violations for Board of Education Ethics Code in the 5 

school years leading up to its Baldrige Award. In addition, 

15% reduction in school handbook violations per 100 

students, a 3% improvement per year (I-SS, Baldrige Award 

winner in education sector) 
86 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 

•	 Zero ethical violations for Board of Education Code of 

Ethics, Student Code of Conduct, and Athlete Code of 

Conduct. In addition, 100% compliance record for Special 

Education and Individuals with Disabilities Act regulations 

(Pearl River School District, Baldrige Award winner in 

education sector) 

•	 Zero	violations	or	citations	of	legal,	ethical,	regulatory,	or	

operational responsibilities for the five years leading up to 

its Baldrige Award. In addition, out of 182 U.S. business 

schools on an EBI student satisfaction survey, Monfort 

College ranked in the top 2.5% on both items related to 

curriculum/teaching of ethics and social responsibility 

issues. (Kenneth W. Monfort College of Business, Baldrige 

Award winner in education sector) 

•	 Zero	violations	of	the	Board	of	Education	Code	of	Conduct	

and no staff violations of ethical practices as stated in 

board policy in at least 18 years (Community Consolidated 

School District 15, Baldrige Award winner in education 

sector) 
Category 2: Strategic Planning 

The Strategic Planning category guides you in examining how your 

organization develops strategic objectives and action plans, as well 

as how you implement, change, and measure progress on those 

objectives and plans. The first item in this category asks how you 

develop your strategy to address the pressures on your organization 

and leverage its marketplace advantages. For example, 

How do your strategic objectives achieve the following? 

•	 address	your	strategic	challenges	and	advantages	

•	 address	your	opportunities	for	innovation	in	products,	

operations, and your business model 

•	 capitalize	on	your	current	core	competencies1 

and address the potential need for new core competencies 

•	 balance	short-	and	longer-term	challenges	and	

opportunities 

•	 consider	and	balance	the	needs	of	all	key	stakeholders

•	 enhance	your	ability	to	adapt	to	sudden	shifts	in	your	

market conditions 

Category 3: Customer Focus 

The Customer Focus category guides you in examining how 

your organization engages customers to attain long-term success 

in the marketplace, including how you listen to the “voice of 

the customer,” build customer relationships, and use customer 

information to improve and identify opportunities for innovation. 

1The term “core competencies” refers to your organization’s areas of greatest expertise. 

Your organization’s core competencies are those strategically important capabilities 

that are central to fulfilling your mission or provide an advantage in your marketplace 

or service environment. Core competencies frequently are challenging for competitors 

or suppliers and partners to imitate, and they may provide a sustainable competitive 

advantage. Absence of a needed organizational core competency may result in a 

significant strategic challenge or disadvantage in the marketplace. Core competencies may 

involve technology expertise, unique service offerings, a marketplace niche, or a particular 

business acumen (e.g., business acquisitions). 

The Criteria: Framework for Performance Excellence 87 
For example, questions in this category ask how you listen 

to customers and gain information on their satisfaction and 

dissatisfaction, how you determine what products to offer and 

communicate with customers to support them, and how you manage 

customer relationships and complaints: 

•	 How	do	you	listen	to	customers	to	obtain	actionable	

information? 

•	 How	do	you	market,	build,	and	manage	relationships	with	

customers to acquire customers and build market share; 

retain customers, meet their requirements, and exceed 

their expectations in each stage of the customer life cycle 

(each stage of their relationship with you); and increase 

their engagement with you? 

Category 4: Measurement, Analysis, 

and Knowledge Management 

The Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management category 

examines how you select, gather, analyze, manage, and improve 

your organization’s data, information, and knowledge assets. Other 

questions focus on how you manage information technology 

and how you use organizational review findings to improve your 

organization’s performance. For example, 

•	 How	do	you	select,	collect,	align,	and	integrate	data	and	

information for tracking daily operations and overall 

organizational performance, including progress relative to 

strategic objectives and action plans? 

•	 What	are	your	key	organizational	performance	measures,	

including key short- and longer-term financial measures? 

•	 How	frequently	do	you	track	these	measures?	

•	 How	do	you	use	these	data	and	information	to	support	

organizational decision making and innovation? 

88 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Category 5: Workforce Focus 

The Workforce Focus category asks how your organization assesses 

the capabilities and staffing levels you need in your workforce and 

builds an environment that will lead to high performance by your 

workforce. Other questions explore your ability to engage, manage, 

and develop your workforce with the aim of using its full potential in 

alignment with your mission and strategy. For example, 

•	 How	do	you	assess	your	workforce	capability	and	capacity	

needs, including skills, competencies, and staffing levels? 

•	 How	does	your	workforce	performance	management	

system support high-performance work and workforce 

engagement; consider workforce compensation, reward, 

recognition, and incentive practices; and reinforce a 

customer and business focus and achievement of your 

action plans? 

Category 6: Operations Focus 

The Operations Focus category (which was the Process Management 

category until the revised 2011–2012 Criteria) guides you in 

examining how your organization designs, manages, and improves 

the systems it uses to accomplish its work, including all external and 

internal resources. Other questions ask how you design, manage, 

and improve the key processes you use to implement those work 

systems in a way that delivers customer value and leads to success 

and sustainability for your organization. An additional focus is 

your organization’s readiness for emergencies. Here’s a sampling of 

category 6 questions: 

•	 What	are	your	organization’s	work	systems?	

•	 How	do	you	manage	and	improve	your	work	systems	to	

deliver customer value and achieve organizational success 

and sustainability? 

The Criteria: Framework for Performance Excellence 89 
Category 7: Results 

The Results category guides you in analyzing and reviewing results 

data and information in all key areas of your organization—product 

performance and process effectiveness, customers, workforce, 

leadership and governance, and financial and market performance. 

Questions focus on your organization’s performance relative to that 

of your competitors and other organizations with similar offerings, as 

appropriate. 

The questions in the first of the five results items ask for data and 

information on the performance of your organization’s key products 

(including student learning results in education organizations and 

health care results in health care organizations), as well as process 

effectiveness and efficiency results. As appropriate, you report 

your results separately for each of your product offerings, customer 

groups, market segments, and process types and locations, and 

include appropriate comparative data. Here are some sample 

questions: 

•	 What	are	your	current	levels	and	trends	in	key	measures	

or indicators of product and process performance that are 

important to and directly serve your customers? 

•	 How	do	these	results	compare	with	the	performance	of	

your competitors and other organizations with similar 

offerings? 

90 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
What NOT to do in preparing 

a Baldrige Award applica ion! 

The Dilbert comic strip 

spoofed the Baldrige Program 

in the mid-1990s. 

t

How Can the 

Baldrige Program 

Help You Now? 

Integrating the Baldrige Criteria into your organization is not easy or 

a quick fix. But results show that adopting them can lead to worldclass results—from product and process outcomes, to customerfocused outcomes, to workforce-focused outcomes, to leadership 

and governance outcomes, to financial and market outcomes. But 

what are the next steps? How can the Criteria help you now? 

Self-Assessing 

The Baldrige Web site includes many tools that may provide you 

with insight into your organization’s current level of performance 

and opportunities for improvement. All the tools are free to 

download and distribute. Here are some examples: 

•	 Are	We	Making	Progress?	and Are We Making Progress 

as Leaders? are questionnaires for your workforce and 

leaders that will help you assess your organization’s 

performance and learn what you can improve, as well as 

focus improvement and communication efforts where your 

workforce feels they are most needed. 

How Can the Baldrige Program Help You Now? 93 
•	 easyInsight: Take a First Step Toward a Baldrige SelfAssessment is a questionnaire based on the Baldrige 

Criteria’s Organizational Profile. This self-assessment tool 

will help you measure your organization against others that 

have taken the challenge. Then you can identify the gaps in 

your organization’s performance and develop action plans 

for your journey toward performance excellence. 

•	 The Organizational Profile (the preface to the Baldrige 

Criteria) provides a perfect framework for you to ensure 

a common understanding about your organization, select 

information and collect data as you continue your selfassessment, and identify gaps in your approaches and their 

deployment as a basis for performance improvement efforts. 

Applying for Feedback and an Award 

Many organizations that have integrated the Criteria for Performance 

Excellence into their own business models apply for the Malcolm 

Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest honor for 

organizational performance given by the President of the United 

States or one of his direct reports. The organizations featured in this 

book have all received this honor by using their responses to the 

Criteria for Performance Excellence as an award application. State 

and local Baldrige-based programs throughout the country also offer 

educational services designed for organizations new to Baldrige, 

and they too have award programs, usually with varied tiers. Many 

are grouped as part of the Alliance for Performance Excellence, a 

nonprofit national network that aims to enhance the success and 

sustainability of organizations. In all award programs, at the local, 

state, or national levels, award applicants receive feedback reports 

written by trained examiners that detail the organization’s strengths 

and opportunities for improvement. 

94 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Benchmarking Role Models 

and Sharing Best Practices 

Baldrige Award winners are role-model organizations that are ready 

to share their best practices. On the Baldrige Program’s Web site, 

you can read their success stories and review their Baldrige Award 

application summaries, which are condensed versions of their actual 

Baldrige Award applications. Using contact information found on 

the Baldrige Web site, you can contact the Baldrige Award winners 

directly for more information on their best management practices 

and, if applicable, visit them for sharing days and benchmarking. 

You also can attend presentations by multiple Baldrige Award 

winners at the annual Quest for Excellence conference held each 

April in Washington, D.C., and at the fall regional conferences held 

throughout the United States. Finally, you can listen to online videos 

on how Baldrige Award winners got started with Baldrige and see 

portions of their presentations. 

Baldrige Award Winners (1988 through 2010) 

•	 3M Dental Products Division (now known as 3M ESPE Dental 

Products; 1997) 

•	 ADAC Laboratories (1996)

•	 Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital (2010)

•	 Ames Rubber Corporation (1993)

•	 Armstrong World Industries, Inc., Building Products Operations 

(1995) 

•	 AT&T Consumer Communications Services (now known as the 

Consumer Markets Division of AT&T; 1994)
 

•	 AT&T Network Systems Group Transmission Systems Business Unit 

(now part of Alcatel-Lucent; 1992) 

•	 AT&T Universal Card Services (now part of Citigroup, Inc.; 1992)

•	 AtlantiCare (2009)

•	 Baptist Hospital, Inc. (2003)

•	 BI (1999)

•	 Boeing Aerospace Support (now known as Boeing Support 

Systems; 2003) 

• Boeing Airlift and Tanker Programs (now known as Boeing Global 

Mobility Systems; 1998) 

•	 Branch-Smith Printing Division (2002)

•	 Bronson Methodist Hospital (2005)

How Can the Baldrige Program Help You Now? 95 
•	 Cadillac Motor Car Company (1990)

•	 Cargill Corn Milling North America (2008)

•	 Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation-U.S. (2003)

•	 Chugach School District (2001)

•	 City of Coral Springs (2007)

•	 Clarke American Checks, Inc. (now known as Harland Clarke; 2001)

•	 Community Consolidated School District 15 (2003)

•	 Corning Incorporated Telecommunications Products Division 

(1995) 

•	 Custom Research Inc. (now known as GFK Custom Research, Inc.; 

1996) 

•	 Dana Commercial Credit Corporation (now part of Dana Holding 

Corporation; 1996) 

•	 Dana Corporation–Spicer Driveshaft Division (now known as Dana 

Corporation Torque Traction; 2000) 

•	 DynMcDermott Petroleum Operations Company (now known as 

DM Petroleum Operations Company; 2005) 

•	 Eastman Chemical Company (1993)

•	 Federal Express Corporation (1990)

•	 Freese and Nichols Inc. (2010)

•	 Globe Metallurgical Inc. (now part of Globe Specialty Metals, Inc.; 

1988) 

•	 Granite Rock Company (now known as Graniterock; 1992)

•	 GTE Directories Corporation (now part of Verizon Information 

Services; 1994)

•	 Heartland Health (2009)

•	 Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, L.L.C. (2009)

•	 IBM Rochester (1990)

•	 Iredell-Statesville Schools (2008)

•	 Jenks Public Schools (2005)

•	 K&N Management (2010)

•	 KARLEE Company, Inc. (2000)

•	 Kenneth W. Monfort College of Business (2004)

•	 Los Alamos National Bank (2000)

•	 Marlow Industries, Inc. (1991)

•	 MEDRAD, Inc. (2003 and 2010)

•	 Mercy Health System (2007)

•	 Merrill Lynch Credit Corporation (1997)

•	 MESA Products, Inc. (2006)

•	 MidwayUSA (2009)

•	 Milliken & Company (1989)

•	 Montgomery County Public Schools (2010)

•	 Motorola Commercial, Government and Industrial Solutions 

Sector (now part of Motorola Government and Enterprise Mobility 

Solutions; 2002) 

•	 Motorola, Inc. (1988)

96 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
• Nestlé Purina PetCare Company (2010)

• North Mississippi Medical Center (2006)

• Operations Management International, Inc. (now known as CH2M 

HILL; 2000) 

• Pal’s Sudden Service (2001)

• Park Place Lexus (2005)

• Pearl River School District (2001)

• Poudre Valley Health System (2008)

• Premier Inc. (2006)

• PRO-TEC Coating Company (2007)

• Richland College (2005)

• Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton (2004)

• Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City (2003)

• Sharp HealthCare (2007)

• Solar Turbines Incorporated (1998)

• Solectron Corporation (1991 and 1997)

• SSM Health Care (2002)

• STMicroelectronics, Inc.–Region Americas (1999)

• Stoner, Inc. (2003)

• Studer Group (2010)

• Sunny Fresh Foods, Inc. (now known as Cargill Kitchen Solutions; 

1999 and 2005) 

• Texas Instruments Incorporated Defense Systems & Electronics 

Group (now part of Raytheon Company; 1992) 

• Texas Nameplate Company, Inc. (1998 and 2004)

• The Bama Companies, Inc. (2004)

• The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C. (now part of Marriott 

International; 1992 and 1999) 

• Trident Precision Manufacturing, Inc. (1996)

• U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering 

Center (2007) 

• University of Wisconsin-Stout (2001)

• Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program Clinical Research 

Pharmacy Coordinating Center (2009) 

• Wainwright Industries, Inc. (1994)

• Wallace Co., Inc. (1990)

• Westinghouse Electric Corporation Commercial Nuclear Fuel 

Division (1988) 

• Xerox Business Services (1997)

• Xerox Corporation Business Products & Systems (1989)

• Zytec Corporation (now part of Artesyn Technologies; 1991)

For more information, including organizational contacts and 

locations, profiles, online videos, and Baldrige Award application 

summaries, visit the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program 

Web site at http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/.

How Can the Baldrige Program Help You Now? 97 

Appendix: Examples 

by Criteria Category 

The following sampling of Baldrige Award winners’ processes 

and results is provided to exemplify each of the seven Criteria 

categories. The information and graphics are current as of the year 

each organization won the Baldrige Award. However, the featured 

processes and results do not necessarily demonstrate current best 

practices since organizations that use the Criteria aim to achieve 

continuous improvements and innovations. 

Category 1 

Premier Inc., a 2006 Baldrige Award winner, is a role model that 

has demonstrated its effective and innovative leadership. At the 

2007 Quest for Excellence conference, Premier Inc. President and 

CEO Richard Norling discussed the foundations of his company’s 

visioning process. After recounting how his health care alliance 

was formed in 1996 through a merger of three smaller alliances, 

he stressed that “embedding Baldrige was crucial to our shaping 

Premier successfully from these beginnings.” 

With a shared purpose of improving the health of communities, 

Premier Inc. executives set a goal that would extend 20–30 years 

out. That goal envisioned that the Premier health care alliance’s 

owners (200 or more nonprofit health care providers and health 

Appendix: Examples by Criteria Category 99 
system organizations) would be the highest-quality and most costeffective health care systems in their markets and that the alliance 

would become the major influence in reshaping health care. To align 

the organization with this goal, Premier Inc. leaders set out to ensure 

that the organization’s core roles and strategies would aim toward its 

achievement and that core values would support it. 

Said Norling, “Over the years, and with some great insight from 

our Baldrige assessment feedback reports, we have put in place an 

overall leadership system used in common by all our managers. 

It gives them a common-vocabulary basis for the functions they 

perform, keeps before us the requirements of leading and managing, 

and serves as the integrator and summary point of our other main 

processes.” He added that “Baldrige helped us establish what steps, 

functions, and areas our leadership/management system needs to 

include in order to meet the Criteria—not only strategic planning, 

for example, but such things as reward and recognition and 

organizational learning.” 

Mercy Health System, a 2007 Baldrige Award winner, provides 

another example of excellence in leadership. The leaders of the 

Janesville, Wisconsin-based health care organization demonstrate 

their personal commitment to the organization’s values and serve 

as role models of those values through Mercy’s “servant leadership” 

Mercy’s Servant Leadership 

Value Producers 

• Doctors • Therapists • Nurses 

Value Enhancers 

• VPs • Directors 

Value Supporters 

• Clerks • Housekeepers 

Synthesizers 

• CEO 

• CMO 

100 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
(depicted in the graphic on page 100). This approach inverts the 

traditional, top-down management style such that organizational 

leaders become facilitators who serve the workforce, whose members, 

in turn, provide value to patients and other stakeholders. To ensure 

that the entire organization uses servant leadership consistently, 

Mercy’s leaders are trained on the philosophy at the Mercy Institute 

for Leadership Excellence and the Leadership Development Academy. 

Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program Clinical Research 

Pharmacy Coordinating Center, which received the Baldrige Award 

in 2009, also demonstrates excellence in leadership. One way 

executives of the Albuquerque, New Mexico-based organization 

personally promote legal and ethical behavior is through a popular 

course taken by the entire workforce: “The Code of the West: Ethics 

the Cowboy Way.” The Cowboy Ethics Program sets behavioral 

expectations for employees and conveys them through beliefs such 

as “live each day with courage; take pride in your work; be tough, 

but fair; and ride for the brand.” 

As another example of role-model leadership, Nestlé Purina PetCare 

Company, a 2010 Baldrige Award winner in manufacturing, has 

established its vision and values based on four principles of the 

company’s founder: “Stand Tall, Think Tall, Smile Tall, and Live Tall.” 

Appendix: Examples by Criteria Category 101 
Senior leaders of the St. Louis, Missouri-based company have added 

a “5th Tall”: “We create tall with innovation.” They communicate 

these ideals through many means and ensure that they are integrated 

with company strengths and processes, including employee 

recruitment and hiring. 

Heartland Health, a 2009 Baldrige Award 

winner, demonstrates excellence in leadership 

and social responsibility in its vision of and 

commitment to community health. Based in St. 

Joseph, Missouri, this nonprofit, communitybased integrated health system has developed a 

three-tiered, collaborative approach to improving 

the health of the residents of the Missouri, 

Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa communities 

it serves. This approach is visualized as a 

pyramid of three layers that illustrates how 

the organization’s entities work together to 

accomplish a common vision of making 

Heartland Health and its service areas the best 

and safest places in America where people 

can receive health care and live a healthy and 

productive life. This vision is maintained in plain 

102 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
sight through its integration at all four entities of the organization: 

Heartland Regional Medical Center, Heartland Clinic, Community 

Health Improvement Solutions, and Heartland Foundation. 

Heartland Health participates in a community-wide planning process 

that addresses seven areas of public health: healthy kids, deliberate 

safety, healthy/active elderly, community-wide mental health, 

optimal cost and access to health care, healthy lifestyles, and health 

management. This approach has led to the development of initiatives 

such as emPowerU, a state-of-the-art technology learning center 

managed by Heartland Health’s foundation that offers programs to 

support youth and promote community health. 

Category 2 

2007 Baldrige Award winner City of Coral Springs, Florida, has 

demonstrated excellence in strategic planning by involving all 

citizens, including business owners, in creating a shared vision 

for the future. Coral Springs gathers input from citizens through 

a citywide annual survey, focus groups, transaction surveys, an 

automated comment-and-complaint system, the City Hall in the 

Mall, advisory boards and committees, community visioning forums, 

Coral Springs’ Strategic Planning 

Data Analysis Citizen Input 

Strategic Plan 

Business Plan 

Budget 

Output to Citizens 

Appendix: Examples by Criteria Category 103 
and annual “Slice of the Springs” meetings. Based on input from 

these forums and on key environmental and performance data, the 

city establishes the strategic plan, which includes strategic priorities, 

directional statements, goals, core values, and key measures of 

intended outcomes. As illustrated in the figure on the previous 

page, the strategic plan, in turn, drives the city’s operational plan, 

its budgets, and the services it provides to citizens, who then give 

feedback that becomes input for the next planning process. 

Freese and Nichols Inc., a 2010 Baldrige Award winner in the small 

business category, also demonstrates strategic planning excellence. 

The multiservice engineering, architecture, and environmental 

science consulting firm uses a year-long strategic planning process to 

identify indicators in key focus areas, as well as critical actions and 

measures, for its balanced scorecard. Representatives from all areas 

of the organization participate in the process. And a managementlevel Futures Committee examines trends and changes that are 

likely to impact the firm in five to 15 years. In addition, the firm 

uses a “catch-ball” process to cascade plans down to the individual 

level within the organization in order to ensure a commitment of 

resources to carry out the planned strategies. 

Freese and Nichols’s Annual Strategic Planning Process 

Establish 

Strategic 

Direction 

External 

Scan 

Strategic 

Imperative 

Revised 

Mission/ 

Vision/Guiding 

Principles 

Market 

Scan 

Develop 

Strategies 

and Plans 

Market & 

Service 

Strategies 

Growth 

Strategies 

Capability 

Strategies 

Goals and 

Actions 

Deploy 

Strategies 

and Plans 

Freese and 

Nichols Inc. 

Planning 

Retreat 

Group Annual 

Operating Plan 

Retreats 

Annual 

Operating Plan 

Budget 

Individual 

Dev. Plans 

104 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
2010 Baldrige Award winner Montgomery County Public Schools 

(MCPS) provides another example of excellence in strategic 

planning. This excellence is seen in the systematic alignment of 

the strategic plan, Our Call to Action: Pursuit of Excellence (OCA), 

with actions at every level of the school system. The OCA, rooted 

in the school district’s vision, mission, values, goals, and academic 

priorities, also aligns with the Maryland State Board of Education’s 

master plan and federal education requirements. The plan reflects 

the shared concerns and expectations of the district’s partners, 

customers, and community members as a result of senior leaders’ 

extensive outreach efforts to them. And the plan cascades downward 

such that each office, department, and school in the 144,000-student 

system has developed related improvement plans and performance 

measures. The well-aligned plans enable the suburban D.C. school 

district to develop and deliver rigorous instruction that meets 

students’ individual needs. 

Appendix: Examples by Criteria Category 105 
Category 3 

Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, a 1992 and 1999 Baldrige Award 

winner, demonstrates excellence in customer focus. The company’s 

Customer Loyalty and Satisfaction System (C.L.A.S.S.; depicted in 

the figure below) and the Mystique system developed in more recent 

years, for example, have enabled Ritz-Carlton to remember the 

individual service preferences of hundreds of thousands of guests by 

documenting and storing information on guests’ likes and dislikes in 

a database. Such approaches have allowed the company’s workforce 

and suppliers to know what is distinctive about each customer or 

event at the Ritz-Carlton’s hotels. Former Ritz-Carlton Vice President 

of Operations John Timmerman has noted that, through processes like 

C.L.A.S.S., the Ritz-Carlton can adjust its offerings to changes such as 

the less formal style of service now required by many customers. 

Ritz-Carlton’s 

C.L.A.S.S. 

Guest Preference 

Name: 

Likes: 

Dislikes: 

Knowledge 

of Individual 

Customers, 

Stored in 

C.L.A.S.S. 

• Likes/Dislikes 

• Previous Difficulties 

• Family Interests 

• Personal Interests 

• Preferred Credit Cards 

Recent and Frequent Use: 

• The Ritz- Carlton, Naples 

• Other Ritz-Carlton Hotels Lifetime: 

• Usage 

• Amount of Purchase 

AtlantiCare, a 2009 Baldrige Award winner, is also a role model in 

its focus on customers. Through a five-phase, voice-of-the-customer 

inquiry process, the 

southeastern New Jersey 

health care provider gathers 

the needs and preferences 

of its patients and other 

stakeholders. AtlantiCare 

uses this input to identify 

health care services and 

innovations that will satisfy 

customers. Information 

from focus groups held 

106 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
by AtlantiCare led to the development of the Access Center, a 

multilingual telephone information service for the community that 

includes a 24-hour, Web-based, self-service feature. The Access 

Center met patients’ need for expanded access to AtlantiCare and 

helped them navigate the health care system. A measure of the 

Access Center’s success is that the number of returning callers tripled 

from 2006 to 2008. 

2007 Baldrige Award winner 

Sharp HealthCare also exemplifies 

excellence in customer 

focus. Through the Customer 

Knowledge System and multiple 

ways of listening to the voice 

of the customer, the San Diego, 

California-based health care 

organization systematically 

identifies, considers, and takes 

action to meet customer needs 

and preferences. Sharp’s workforce 

is empowered to use a wide range 

of tools to identify the needs, 

expectations, and preferences of 

former, current, and potential customers and partners at all levels. 

This information is integrated into Sharp’s strategic planning, goal 

setting, program development, work process redesign, selection of 

technology, and consumer marketing. 

Assess Customer Group & 

Target Segment Research 

Receive Customer Group 

Feedback (Listening & 

Learning Tools) 

Analyze Learning 

Develop Marketing Plans 

Implement Strategies 

Measure Results Communicate 

Results 

Sharp HealthCare’s 

Customer 

Knowledge System 

Appendix: Examples by Criteria Category 107 
Category 4 

Texas Nameplate Company, Inc., a Baldrige Award winner in 1998 

and 2004, demonstrates excellence in measurement, analysis, and 

knowledge management. This small business has used customized 

software (including SimonTM, Real-Time DashboardTM, and Pipeline 

DashboardTM) on a Web-browser-based intranet known as The New 

Hotrod to share and analyze data in support of decision making 

and innovation. On The New Hotrod, the company documents the 

“facts” of its business in Web pages that are constantly updated with 

real-time information, and employees may maintain their own Web 

pages to share information. The company refines its work processes 

as the significance of data becomes apparent. For Texas Nameplate, 

the results of this effective management of organizational knowledge 

have been innovation and improved integration. 

Texas Nameplate’s The New Hotrod 

108 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
2007 Baldrige Award winner U.S. Army Armament Research, 

Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) has demonstrated 

excellence in its consistent use of fact-based decision making. 

As illustrated in the figure below, ARDEC assembles and transfers 

relevant knowledge for use in strategic planning through its 

Performance Assurance System. With this system, ARDEC ensures 

that its performance is aligned with and supports its overall 

strategy. Employees at each of the organization’s directorates gather 

competitive and comparative data during strategic planning. ARDEC 

uses these data to ensure that it remains the most innovative supplier 

of armament solutions while meeting its customers’ requirements for 

cost, schedule, and performance. 

ARDEC’s Performance Assurance System 

Strategic Planning Process 

Strategic Objective/End 

Determine Measures, Assign Owners, Align 

with Strategic Initiatives/Way 

Determine Who Reviews and 

at What Frequency 

Collect and Validate Data 

Communicate Results Report via Strategic 

Management System, Compare to Target 

No Target 

Met? Yes 

Gap Analysis/ 

Action Plan 

Revision 

Improvement 

Cycle 

Prior-Year Performance Evaluation Utilized as 

an Input into Strategic Planning Process and

as a Measure of Effectiveness 

Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Annual Scorecard, 

Reports and Responsive Ad-Hoc Reporting 

Appendix: Examples by Criteria Category 109 
Category 5 

2009 Baldrige Award winner Honeywell Federal Manufacturing 

& Technologies, L.L.C. (FM&T) has modeled excellence in its 

workforce focus. The management and operating contractor of 

a National Nuclear Security Administration plant in Kansas City, 

Missouri, among other contract locations, has a workforce of 2,704. 

They serve government and private-sector clients in multidisciplinary 

engineering and manufacturing operations. Through the Enterprise 

Alignment Process, the company links the daily accountability 

of its salaried and hourly employees to its balanced scorecard of 

performance measures and its strategic plan. The result has been 

high levels of employee satisfaction as measured by survey scores. 

Seventy-two percent of the company’s employees agreed that they 

felt appreciated, and 81 percent agreed that management listened to 

their ideas. In addition, 72 percent were satisfied with the positive 

environment, and 80 percent were satisfied with the information 

provided to them. In all of these areas, FM&T’s workforce had higher 

satisfaction survey scores than the organization’s competitors, who 

are best-in-class commercial manufacturers. 

110 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
2007 Baldrige Award winner Mercy Health System has also 

demonstrated excellence in workforce focus. The health care 

organization’s commitment to engaging and satisfying workforce 

members, who are called “partners,” is conveyed through its 

three-pronged approach: inform, involve, and celebrate. As 

part of “inform,” the Mercy Leadership Group communicates 

in ways that ensure that the workforce knows the organization’s 

goals, understands them, and, most important, can relate them to 

Mercy’s mission: to provide exceptional health care services that 

result in healing in the broadest sense. For the “involve” prong, 

Mercy forms a partnership with its workforce. For example, the 

organization administers annual satisfaction surveys to learn what 

is most important to employees; conducts focus groups on diversity, 

wellness, and safety; and involves the workforce in developing 

action plans. As part of “celebrate,” programs such as the Culture 

of Excellence ensure that workforce members achieve personal and 

organizational success. To determine the factors that affect workforce 

engagement and satisfaction, the Culture of Excellence Steering 

Committee and the Human Resource Planning Committee analyze 

employee feedback and other data. The organization celebrates 

people, ideas, and achievements with recognition dinners, “baskets 

for champions,” and the Partner Idea Program, which has rewarded 

over $15,000 in cash prizes to workforce members who submit 

ideas. 

Appendix: Examples by Criteria Category 111 
Another Baldrige role model, MEDRAD, Inc., which received the 

Baldrige Award in 2003 and again in 2010, has greatly benefitted 

from engaging its employees in organizational improvement. 

Participation in MEDRAD’s Value Improvement Program, which 

captures, measures, tracks, and recognizes employees’ ideas for 

improvement, has increased 12-fold from 50 employees in 1999 

to more than 600 in 2009. Value delivered from the program has 

increased from $23,000 per employee in 2005 to $45,000 in 2009, 

dramatically surpassing Industry Week magazine’s “Best Plant” 

benchmark level of $10,000 per employee for similar improvement 

programs. 

Category 6 

Boeing Airlift and Tanker Programs, a 1998 Baldrige Award winner 

now known as Boeing Mobility, has demonstrated excellence 

in designing, managing, and improving its work processes. As a 

subunit of the Boeing Company, with headquarters in Long Beach, 

California, the manufacturer created a seven-step approach to 

defining, managing, stabilizing, and improving its work processes. 

This process-based management, or PBM, helped the company 

continually improve the design, development, and production of 

the C-17 Globemaster 11 airlifter for its primary customer, the U.S. 

Air Force. The company also used PBM to set measures of quality, 

timeliness, and cycle time—which serve as indicators of efficiency 

and are the chief drivers of customer satisfaction for the company. 

2009 Baldrige Award winner 

MidwayUSA, a small business with 

two facilities in Columbia, Missouri, 

is another role model in how it 

designs, manages, and improves its 

work processes to deliver value to 

customers. The Internet and catalog 

retail merchant of shooting, reloading, 

gunsmithing, and hunting products 

uses 1,500 documented processes to 

run the business. Every one of these 

processes focuses on a key stakeholder. 

112 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
The strong focus on operations demonstrated 

by DynMcDermott Petroleum Operations 

Company (DM; now DM Petroleum Operations 

Company), which received the Baldrige Award 

in 2005, has delivered value to its customer, the 

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and boosted 

organizational success and sustainability in 

partnership with the DOE. DM determines the 

requirements for its key value creation processes 

(see figure below) in collaboration with its 

customer. If the DOE’s mission requirements, 

orders, or strategic plan changes, DM 

incorporates those changes into its strategic plan 

and implements them through related action 

plans. Changes in the needs of customers, 

suppliers, and stakeholders are incorporated in 

real time through daily communications and 

from weekly, monthly, quarterly, and six-month 

reviews. All processes incorporate customer 

feedback, and many incorporate supplier feedback, such as input on 

security and emergency preparedness. 

DM’s Key Value Creation Processes 

• Crude Oil Acquisition (Fill Process) 

• Drawdown Process 

• Vapor Pressure 

• Crude Oil Quality 

• Maintenance Process 

• Cavern Integrity 

• Emergency Preparedness Process 

• ISO 14001 Process (Environmental) 

Appendix: Examples by Criteria Category 113 
Category 7 

Boeing Airlift and Tanker Programs (now known as Boeing Mobility) 

achieved excellent results, including a 54 percent reduction over 

five years in time spent on rework and repair of the C-17. In 

addition, the mean time between corrective maintenance procedures 

increased eightfold between 1993 and 1997, and when the Boeing 

subunit received the Baldrige Award in 1998, the C-17’s level of 

performance was nearly four times better than that of the next 

best competitor’s aircraft. Boeing attributed these results to quality 

improvements and efficiencies achieved through its systematic 

methodology for managing its manufacturing and other processes. 

Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company’s extraordinary customer focus has 

paid off in customer satisfaction and financial gains. In a survey of 

frequent leisure travelers, Ritz-Carlton held the top score in complete 

satisfaction during the period leading up to its second Baldrige 

Award. Its closest competitor’s score was 14 percentage points lower. 

The company’s return on investment increased 85 percent over three 

years. Revenue per available room exceeded the industry average 

by more than 300 percent—and the upscale hotel group average by 

more than 150 percent. In turn, its gross profit increased more than 

12 percent over three years. Ritz-Carlton also managed to decrease 

employee turnover nearly 60 percent over the nine years leading 

up to its 1999 Baldrige recognition. Its turnover rate was more than 

114 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
Sharp HealthCare’s Patient Perception of Quality

20 percentage points lower than the industry average at the time. 

At 77 percent, employee satisfaction on all issues surveyed was 23 

percentage points higher than the service company norm. 

2007 Baldrige Award winner Sharp HealthCare led the San Diego 

region in consumers’ perception of quality (see the figure below) as 

a result of efforts to listen to the voice of the customer and respond 

to the community’s requirements. In addition, Sharp’s focus on 

enhancing customer relationships and loyalty led to sustained 

improvement in both inpatient and outpatient loyalty to and 

likelihood of recommending Sharp. In these areas, ratings of Sharp 

either approached or met the 75th percentile for hospitals tracked by 

Press Ganey, as shown in the figure on the next page. 

Sharp HealthCare’s Patient Perception of Quality 

Has the best clinical quality 

Is the best place to work 

Has the best customer service 

Has the best doctors 

Has the best nurses 

Is the best overall 

Better

0%  5%  10%  15%  20%  25%  30% 

Percentage of Respondents

Sharp 2003 

Sharp 2006 

Closest Competitor 2006 

Appendix: Examples by Criteria Category 115 
Sharp HealthCare’s Patient Loyalty and Likelihood to Recommend
 Sharp HealthCare’s Patient Loyalty and Likelihood to Recommend

Percentage Score

Top­Quartile Performance 100 

80 

60 

40 

20 

0 

Percentile

Better

Likely to Recommend—Inpatient Likely to Recommend—Outpatient 

FY1 FY2 FY3 FY4 FY5

Press Ganey 75th 

For 2005 Baldrige Award winner DynMcDermott Petroleum 

Operations Company (DM; now DM Petroleum Operations 

Company), the measure of drawdown readiness (displayed in the 

figure below) shows how effective process management enables 

the organization to meet customer requirements. DM’s first priority 

is operational readiness because, in the event of an interruption 

to the nation’s oil supply and an order from the President of the 

United States, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve must distribute 

crude oil to refineries. Called “drawdown,” this is DM’s primary 

mission. Over the decade preceding 2005, DM continually 

improved its Operational Readiness System, a strategic planning and 

organizational tool to ensure efficient, secure, and safe drawdown 

and fill. DM’s organizational approach has worked well; between 

2001 and 2005, DM’s drawdown system was available 98 percent of 

the time or more. In each year and at each site, the system exceeded 

the DOE’s expectations. 

In 2005, DM’s responses to Hurricanes Katrina DM’s Drawdown Readiness

and Rita demonstrated the company’s systematic 

approaches to operational readiness, emergency 

100% planning, and emergency response. Although 

both hurricanes affected several company sites, 

80% displacing employees, DM restored oil operations, 

processes, and data communication systems 

60% within five days; in response to the President’s 

drawdown order, DM delivered approximately 30 DM Total Readiness Status
 

DOE Drawdown Target = 95% million barrels of oil without incident.
 

Year 1  Year 2  Year 3  Year 4  Year 5  Year 6  Year 7

116 Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide to the Criteria for Performance Excellence 
NatioNal iNstitute of staNdards aNd techNology 

Patrick Gallagher, Director and Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and 

Technology 

Phillip Singerman, Associate Director for Innovation and Industry Services 

Baldrige PerformaNce excelleNce Program 

Harry S. Hertz, Director 

Jeff Lucas, Deputy Director 

Board of overseers for the malcolm Baldrige 

NatioNal Quality award 

Bryan Bushick, Chief Health Care Strategy Officer, Covisint 

Thomas C. Dolan (Chair), President and CEO, American College of Healthcare 

Executives 

Daniel Domenech, Executive Director, American Association of School Administrators 

S. Thomas Foster, Jr., Professor, Global Supply Chain Management, Brigham Young 

University 

Grande Lum, U.S. Small Business Administration, Director, HUBZone Program 

William McBee, III, Vice President, TCE and Quality, Hewlett-Packard 

Stephen Perry, President and Executive Director, Pro Football Hall of Fame 

Kathryn Rawls, Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence 

Barry K. Rogstad, Former President, American Business Conference; Board Chair, 

Suburban Hospital 

Max Summers, State Director, Missouri Small Business Development Centers 

Margaret Townsend, QBE Consulting, L.L.C. 

fouNdatioN for the malcolm Baldrige NatioNal 

Quality award 

Debbie J. Collard (Chair), Director, Strategy Integration, The Boeing Company 

P. George Benson, Ph.D. (Chair-elect), President, College of Charleston 

William Petasnick (secretary), President and CEO, Froedtert and Community Health 

Letitia Baldrige, Letitia Baldrige Enterprises 

Anne Bryant, Ph.D., Executive Director, National School Boards Association 

Frank Fusco, Executive Director, South Carolina Budget and Control Board 

G. Richard Hastings, President and CEO, Saint Luke’s Health System 

Wright Lassiter, Jr., Ph.D., Chancellor, Dallas County Community College District 

Michael Murphy, President and CEO, Sharp HealthCare 

Susan Sarfati, CAE, President/CEO, High Performance Strategies 

Horst Schulze, President and CEO, The West Paces Hotel Group 

E. David Spong, Ph.D., President (Retired), Boeing Aerospace Support 

W. Paul Worstell, President/CEO (Retired), PRO-TEC Coating Company 
Baldrige Performance Excellence Program 

National Institute of Standards and Technology 

United States Department of Commerce 

Web Site: http://www.nist.gov/baldrige 

Because the Criteria are focused on what best-in-class companies do and are everevolving, measuring ourselves against them and applying for the Award has helped 

CGISS strive to be the best we can be. The Criteria provide a consistent framework to 

ensure we create and balance both short- and long-term value for our stakeholders. 

—Martin Swarbrick, Vice President and Director, Office of Business Excellence, 

Motorola CGISS 

The biggest challenge any organization has today is sustaining high performance and 

I really believe the Baldrige model focuses attention on all aspects of the business 

and forces you to continually re-assess and re-evaluate everything that you’re doing. 

—Ken Schnitzer, Chairman, Park Place Lexus 

I

f I were in charge of the world, all organizations in America would adopt the Baldrige 

Criteria and pursue the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. If America is to 

compete in the world, it’s got to improve its performance, and the Baldrige Criteria is 

the tool to do exactly that. 

—Larry Potterfield, CEO, MidwayUSA 

We felt that the Baldrige process was best to meet our mission statement, and our 

mission is that all students can and will learn. We passionately believe that and 

we looked for a model that would get us to that level of achievement and the Baldrige 

process works for us. 

—Richard E. Maurer, Superintendent of Schools, Pearl River School District 

I

think that Baldrige, especially in health care, is extremely important. Baldrige is a 

commitment to excellence that never ends. . . . We want to learn every day, we want 

to be better every day, and Baldrige gave us the framework . . . to pursue that journey of 

excellence. 

—Mark Laney, President and CEO, Heartland Health 

The veteran is the benefactor of what we provide for our clinical trials, and I think 

that the Baldrige Program actually enabled us to transform the organization from 

being good to a great organization, one that is very high performing. 

—Mike Sather, Director, Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program Clinical 

Research Pharmacy Coordinating Center 

To order a copy of Baldrige 20/20: An Executive’s Guide 


to the Criteria for Performance Excellence, 


contact the American Society for Quality (ASQ):
 

600 North Plankinton Avenue 

Milwaukee, WI 53203 

Telephone: (800) 248-1946; Fax: (414) 272-1734; 

E-Mail: asq@asq.org; Web Site: http://www.asq.org 

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