Original Date: 01/23/1995
Revision Date: 01/18/2007

Sandia had no method to identify, recognize, and reward customer focused quality improvement processes at the team level. At the request of Sandia National Laboratories’ (SNL’s) President, a team of Sandians began translating Malcolm Baldridge award principles into an internal set of criteria to encourage best practices within the laboratories and recognize those that have been successful in applying TQM principles. This set of criteria would directly apply to individual projects.

The improvements included securing top management commitment, a means to identify best practices, a focus on customer requirements, and an understanding of the TQM principles by laboratory personnel. The process was implemented in three phases.

Phase I -- Process Development. Sandia's President, Al Narath, asked that a process be designed to deploy TQM. Through this approach, SNL established a permanent Process Management Team. The team elected to adopt a Malcolm Baldridge-like methodology. This methodology forms the foundation for the President's Quality Award.

Phase II -- Process Implementation. Information regarding the application requirements were distributed to employees and the examiners received training in the review process. Awards are presented based upon scores in the categories of Gold, Silver, Turquoise, and Special Recognition.

Phase III -- Process Improvement. "Lessons learned" data was gathered from applicants and examiners. SNL developed a feedback template for examiners and collected process feedback electronically. Plans for 1995 include tracking financial benefits from improvements resulting from team efforts.

The efforts over the past two years to deploy the quality message at SNL have been successful. The number of applicants for the President's Quality Award have increased as well as the number of examiners involved in the process.

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