Corrosion control solutions company MESA Products (Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA) recently became the first three-time recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, described as the only U.S. presidential award for organizational performance excellence. The company also received the award in 2006 and 2012.
MESA provides products and services to control or prevent corrosion and/or to maintain the structural integrity of assets, which are primarily steel pipelines, storage, and processing facilities supporting nation’s energy infrastructure. The company’s products and services are mostly related to an electrochemical form of corrosion control called cathodic protection. MESA had revenues in 2019 of approximately $90 million and a workforce of 260 employees.
“I congratulate these five U.S. organizations for committing themselves to performance standards that have demonstrable and independently verified positive effects on the American business community,” says Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. “Applying the Baldrige criteria yields practical value to an organization in cost savings, customer satisfaction and financial gain while also producing higher revenue, growth and efficiency for improved competitiveness and performance.”
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) manages the Baldrige Award in cooperation with the private sector. An independent judging panel of examiners reviewed the evaluations and then recommended this year’s award recipients from a field of 20 applicants.
The expert Baldrige judges evaluate organizations in seven areas: leadership; strategy; customers; measurement, analysis and knowledge management; workforce; operations; and results. For the first time in the Baldrige Award program’s 32-year history, site visits—including document reviews, interviews, focus groups, and other interviewing methods—were conducted virtually, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.
MESA’s highlights and accomplishments can be read in a special page on the NIST website.
The Baldrige Award was established by Congress in 1987 and is not given for specific products or services. Since the first group was recognized in 1988, 134 national-level awards have been presented to 124 organizations (including eight two-time award recipients and one three-time recipient).
The Baldrige program is a public-private partnership managed by NIST and funded in part through user fees and support from the Baldrige Foundation. The other four winners of the 2020 award (none are in the corrosion control industry) can be read here.
Source: NIST's Baldridge Performance Excellence Program, www.nist.gov/baldrige/mesa-2020.