Introduction

Fifteen years after their initial publication, the Malcolm Baldrige Award criteria continue to be the best set of guidelines for running an effective organization. Each year, more organizations adopt the criteria to evaluate their progress toward excellence and high performance. Not only have most businesses adopted the Baldrige criteria, but they are being used by most branches of the military, many federal government organizations, schools, and healthcare institutions. Although the number of applicants for the national Baldrige Award have been fewer than 50 for the past few years, state-level awards based on the Baldrige criteria have flourished. New Mexico, for example, received 99 applications for its state quality award in 1997! Appendix A of this book lists the state awards based on the Baldrige criteria. When this book was first published in 1990, it was the only book available on the Baldrige criteria. Now there are at least 20 books on the award criteria, and hundreds of articles have been published. The Baldrige criteria are now even similar to the European Quality Award criteria. The benefits of this are that there is now one global set of standards on how to run an effective organization.