Clarke American Checks Inc. is this years winner of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the manufacturing category.
Karen Hollingsworth, a vice president who heads quality initiatives at the San Antonio company, said Wednesday that the honor capped a 15-year journey for Clarke American: Were still walking on air around here two weeks after the announcement, she said.
Its trademarked First in Service program is a homegrown approach to quality management, Ms. Hollingsworth said.
It incorporates the aspects of many, many quality professionals, she said, but does not conform to any single strategy whether the Six Sigma system that Jack Welch made famous at General Electric Co., the Total Quality Management technique that the American consultant Edwards Deming taught to boost Japanese industrial competitiveness in the 1970s and 1980s, or the ISO 9000 criteria used by the International Organization for Standardization to document quality maintenance processes.
Clarke American began building a quality program in 1986, working with a consultant retained by its British parent company, Novar PLC, to develop what Ms. Hollingsworth called a foundation based on customer service, focused on meeting customer needs and delighting customers.
It uses extensive benchmarking, and documents its practices to promote continuous improvement, she said. The key leadership team develops monthly presentations that are delivered to 3,200 Clarke American associates in 15 states.
Things like that are the tie that binds, because weve got everybody aligned, Ms. Hollingsworth said.
The program also pays off financially, the company says. According to the Web site announcing the award part of the federal National Institute of Standards and Technology site Clarke Americans revenue was $462 million in 2000, against $300 million in 1995. Revenue growth rose to 16% in 2000 from 4.2% in 1996, compared with the average industry rate of less than 1%, and revenue per associate rose 84%, to $148,600, from 1995.
Los Alamos National Bank in New Mexico won a Baldrige last year in the small-business category the first bank among 41 recipients. The awards, which have been handed out since 1988, are named for Malcolm Baldrige, who was President Reagans secretary of commerce from 1981 until his death in 1987.
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