Did you know that "benchmarking" is one of the hallmarks of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award?
The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is given by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology. The program recognizes quality service in the business, health care, education, and nonprofit sectors and was inspired by the ideas of Total Quality Management or TQM. This is the only quality award that is actually awarded by the President of the United States. This award and the Ron Brown Award are the two U.S. presidential awards given to corporations.
The current award criteria are stated to have three important roles in strengthening US competitiveness:
- To help improve organizational performance practices, capabilities and results
- To facilitate communication and sharing of the best practice information among US organizations of all types
- To serve as a working tool for understanding and managing performance and for guiding planning and opportunities for learning
The basic criteria for the award are found at the Baldrige Program Web Site where they provide free downloads as follows:
How does one share best practices? Benchmarking of course!