Business Case Studies in Operations and Project Quality Management: Is performance excellence a goal for your company? In celebration of National Quality Month, Executive Boardroom presents a dialogue with Sun's Kay Kendall and Junaid Mohiuddin, who serve on the Board of Examiners for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the premier award given to U.S. companies that demonstrate performance excellence in their operations.

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Is performance excellence a goal for your company? In celebration of National Quality Month, Executive Boardroom presents a dialogue with Sun's Kay Kendall and Junaid Mohiuddin, who serve on the Board of Examiners for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the premier award given to U.S. companies that demonstrate performance excellence in their operations.

Q: For readers who may not be aware, what are the Baldrige awards?

Junaid: The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is an award presented by the U.S. Department of Commerce to promote and enhance best practices within organizations to help the U.S. increase its competitiveness and effectiveness. The award is one of the country's highest honors and is facilitated by the President of the United States along with the U.S. Commerce Secretary. It began in 1987 with then-Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige in the Reagan administration and has been around ever since.

Q: Do other countries have similar awards?

Kay: There are at least 76 countries with award programs and three regional awards that are based on the Baldrige criteria. There are 42 states with state-based programs.

Junaid: One of the interesting things I observed in my new examiner orientation was that many delegates from foreign countries were there to learn how Baldrige works in the U.S. with the intent of starting awards in their own, often newly-emerging, countries.