Baldrige Awards Presented to Six Organizations

Washington DC, April 19 – Vice President Dick Cheney and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez presented the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award to the six 2005 award winners in a ceremony in Washington, DC.

The Baldrige winners are:

• Sunny Fresh Foods, Inc. (SFF), of Monticello, Minnesota, manufacturer of value-added egg-based food products primarily for the food service industry. SFF produces more than 160 products and has more than 2,000 customers, including quick-service restaurants, schools, healthcare organizations and the military. This is the second Baldrige award for Sunny Fresh Foods, which also won in 1999.
• DynMcDermott Petroleum Operations Company of New Orleans, Louisiana, the sole management and operations contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve – the United States’ emergency oil stockpile – the largest emergency petroleum supply in the world.
• Park Place Lexus, of Plano, Texas, a dealer of new Lexus vehicles and pre-owned luxury vehicles. This suburban Dallas business also services Lexus models and other vehicles, and sells Lexus parts to the wholesale and retail markets.
• Richland College in Dallas, Texas, one of seven two-year community colleges in the Dallas County Community College District. Richland’s key student segment is transfer students, whose primary goal is further education at a four-year university. 
• Jenks Public Schools (JPS) in Jenks, Oklahoma. The district serves both suburban and urban populations. JPS programs and services include an intergenerational program that brings together pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students with senior citizens, a “Parents as Teachers Program” and a student and teacher exchange program with a school in Chengdu, China.
• Bronson Methodist Hospital of Kalamazoo, Michigan. A tertiary medical center providing inpatient and outpatient care in virtually every specialty, Bronson is the only high-risk pregnancy center in southwest Michigan, and one of only four officially designated children’s hospitals in the state.

Cheney praised the recipients as “a group following very diverse missions, but powered by the same basic qualities of teamwork, a problem-solving mind-set, impatience with the status quo, a focus on the customer, and an ethic of responsibility and trust throughout the enterprise.”

Cheney also commented on the social responsibility aspect of the Baldrige criteria: “To receive Baldrige recognition, an organization must also operate by high ethical principles, showing integrity in matters of corporate governance and in public responsibilities. In this way, the Baldrige award is a personal tribute to the men and women of each organization that receives it.”

Gutierrez thanked ASQ for its role in the Baldrige program and recognized ASQ’s 60th anniversary. Three of the award recipients also acknowledged the role of ASQ in their thanks.

The evening before the ceremony, the award-winning organizations were honored at a reception co-hosted by ASQ and the Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

ASQ was represented at the ceremony by Chairman Danny Duhan, Executive Director Paul Borawski, and Managing Director Laurel Nelson-Rowe.

	Representatives of Richland College, the first community college Baldrige winner, accept their award. From left: Vice President Dick Cheney; Stephen K. Mittelstet, Richland College President, and Kathryn K. Eggleston, Vice President for Institutional Effectiveness and Economic Development; Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez; R. Dale Crownover, Chairman of the Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.