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 Baldrige Performance Excellence Program
    
      
  How the Baldrige Program Began
                            Expand or Collapse
          1983–1986: Commissions, Initiatives, and a First Attempt
                      1987: Tragedy Gives Impetus to Award
                      The Criteria Framework and Award Process Are Born
                      The First Baldrige Award Process
                      The Judges Panel and Board of Examiners
                      The Board of Overseers
                      The Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
                      Launch of the Baldrige Program and First Awards Ceremony
                      Baldrige Spreads to the States
                      The Transformation of American Business—and the Other Sectors
                      Twenty‐Five Years LaterThe Board of Overseers

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On March 4, 1988, the charter for the Board of Overseers of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award® was signed. The objectives and duties of a Federal Advisory Board were to make suggestions for the improvement of the award process and an annual report to the NBS Director with recommendations for improvement. The first board included quality experts, business and industry leaders, and labor and public policy experts: Meredith Fernstrom of American Express Company, Armand Feigenbaum of General Systems Company, Douglas Fraser of the United Auto Workers, Bradley Gale of the PIMS/Strategic Planning Institute, David Garvin of Harvard Business School, Joseph Juran of the Juran Institute, Thomas Murrin of Westinghouse, Lionel Olmer of the Department of Commerce (international trade), and Elmer Staats (the former Comptroller General of the United States) of the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

In support of the new Baldrige Award, Juran wrote,

Our loss of quality leadership has already cost us [the United States] millions of jobs and tens of billions of dollars in trade balances. To get out of this crisis, we must create our own quality revolution. It would be useful to our economy to establish a prize which would earn national recognition as evidence of high attainment in quality.
  Performance excellence, Assessment tools and services, Baldrige award, Baldrige examiners, Baldrige Framework and Criteria, Best practices and Leadership development

    
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  baldrige@nist.gov
  (301) 975-2036
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Created April 17, 2023, Updated April 19, 2023 ‹ The Judges Panel and Board of Examiners
              The Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award ›
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