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09/10/2010

Eye Witnesses to Excellence!

Posted by Bob Fangmeyer (a.k.a Marlin Perkins)

Well, it's that time of year again in the Baldrige Program. When all the kids go back to school,the weather cools, and the Baldrige Panel of Judges makes its annual pilgrimage to determine which of the Baldrige Award applicants advance to the next phase of the Baldrige Award Process--site visit review.

Applications for the Baldrige Award are due around the end of May each year. From June through August all applications are reviewed by teams of trained volunteer examiners. The review consists of an in-depth, independent evaluation of the application by each team member, followed by a consensus process that integrates the inputs of all examiners and produces a final product that reflects the most important strengths and improvement opportunities for that applicant.

The Judges emerge from their summer hideaways in early September and migrate to their ancestral meeting place, the tree-lined and manicured grounds of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Once they have all completed the journey and gathered around the sacred U shaped table, they are greeted and surrounded by local inhabitants of the Baldrige Program, eager to help them accomplish their goal... the identification of potential Baldrige Award recipients.

On September 7th the Judges met and selected 16 of the 83 applicants to advance to the site visit phase of the review process as follows:
- 4 of 7 small business applicants
- 1 of 2 service applicants
- 2 of 3 manufacturing applicants
- 7 of 54 health care applicants
- 1 of 10 education applicants
- 1 of 7 nonprofit applicants

Now that the organizations have been identified, the Award Process Team in the Baldrige office is rebuilding the examiner teams to ensure each applicant receives the best possible site visit review. These examiner teams will travel to the applicant's site for one week (either October 10-16 or 17-23) to actually verify and clarify the information provided in the application, interview leadership as well as employees on the front lines, and generally be the eyes and ears of the Judges who next meet in November to select which should be held up as role models and Baldrige Award recipients.

Congratulations to all who are on their Baldrige Journey and are committed to achieving excellence!
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