The 2005 Baldrige Award recipients are:

• Sunny Fresh Foods, Inc., Monticello, Minn. (manufacturing)
• Product rejections for SFF at all four plants have continuously declined. Reducing rework can provide significant productivity improvements: SFF’s rework reduction percentage was measured at 15 percent from 2001 to 2002, 61 percent from 2002 to 2003, and 75 percent from 2003 to 2004.
• DynMcDermott Petroleum Operations, New Orleans, La. (service)
• The storage cost per barrel was $3.00 for Japanese Oil Reserves, $2.40 for U.S. industry storage, $1.60 for the European Oil Stockpile and $.20 for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, managed by DynMcDermott.
• Park Place Lexus, Plano, Texas (small business)
• Park Place Lexus Grapevine location had a New Car Client Satisfaction Index (CSI) of 99.8 percent in 2004 making it the highest rated Lexus dealership in the nation
• Richland College, Dallas, Texas (education)
• RLC’s systematic process for design and evaluation of learning-centered processes utilizes a combination of qualitative, quantitative, in-process formative and end-process summative measures to ensure process requirements are met and to manage processes during day-to-day operations. In addition, standardized process drivers, such as measurements for its many KPIs, and defined curricula for learning processes help ensure a repeatable system is used to meet requirements.
• Jenks Public Schools, Jenks, Okla. (education)
• Drop-out rates, a measure of student satisfaction for JPS students, have decreased steadily from 6.3 percent in 1999 to 1.2 percent at the close of the 2004 school year.
• Bronson Methodist Hospital, Kalamazoo, Mich. (health care)
• BMH shows strong performance improvement and results in Medicare Mortality Rate (mortality rates of people over 65 enrolled in Medicare programs), moving from 4.8 percent in 2002 to 3.5 percent for January-July 2005. This performance exceeds both the CareScience Expected Standard, and the CareScience Best Practice.

It is difficult to get a sense of whether the Baldrige winners are really doing great things, or not. It would seem to me if they truly were worthy of recognition for exceptional management the highlights provided (following the links above) should be more impressive.