Former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans recently appointed four prominent industry leaders to the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award panel of judges.The new judges are Lloyd Barker, Alcoa Inc. director of corporate quality; David C. Branch, Branch-Smith Resources Ltd. chairman and CEO; James R. Evans, Total Quality Management Center director and University of Cincinnati professor of quantitative analysis and operations management; and Steven C. Lampa, Marriott International Corp. senior vice president of lodging quality assurance and rooms operations.

The panel of judges is part of the award’s mostly private-sector board of about 500 examiners who review applications for the Baldrige Award, the nation’s highest Presidential award for quality and organizational performance. The judges review examiner comments and scores, select applicants for site visits and recommend Baldrige Award recipients to the Secretary of Commerce.

In other Baldrige-related news, senior executives from the 2004 Baldrige Award winners—The Bama Co., Texas Nameplate Co. Inc., Kenneth W. Monfort College of Business and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital—will share their best practices and strategies at the Quest for Excellence XVII, April 10–13 in Washington, D.C.

For more information, visit www.baldrige.nist.gov.

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