Six Companies To Receive Presidential Award

This is the first time that a community college, an automotive dealership and an oil industry busi-ness have been named as Baldrige Award recipients. Sunny Fresh Foods is a two-time Baldrige Award recipient; it received the award in the small business category in 1999. Baldrige Award re-cipients can reapply after five years.

The 2005 Baldrige Award recipients were selected from among 64 applicants. All six recipi-ents were evaluated rigorously by an independent board of examiners in seven areas: leadership; strategic planning; customer and market focus; measurement, analysis and knowledge manage-ment; human resource focus; process management; and results. The evaluation process included about 1,000 hours of review and an on-site visit by teams of examiners.

The 2005 Baldrige Award recipients are expected to be presented with the Baldrige Award in Washington, D.C., in early 2006.

Named after the 26th Secretary of Commerce, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award was established by Congress in 1987 to enhance the competitiveness and performance of U.S. businesses and expanded in 1998 to include education and health care. The award promotes ex-cellence in organizational performance, recognizes the quality and performance achievements of U.S. organizations, and publicizes successful performance strategies. The award is not given for specific products or services. Since 1988, 68 Baldrige Awards have been presented to 64 organi-zations.

The Baldrige program is managed by NIST in conjunction with the private sector. For more information, see http://www.nist.gov/