Baldridge Award

(Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award; MBNQA)

An annual award, named after a US Secretary of State for Commerce, given to US organizations that have ‘excelled in quality management and quality achievement’. There are now six categories of winners: manufacturing, service, small business, healthcare, education, and nonprofit, with up to two awards in each category. The award is based on performance against a set of criteria now used by a wide range of companies as a benchmark for their own total quality management systems, regardless of whether they enter for the award. The first-level categories are: leadership; strategic planning; customer and market focus; measurement, analysis, and knowledge management; workforce focus; process management; and results.