Army facility wins national quality award

The Army's Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center has become the first federal recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, a recognition previously open only to private sector companies, the center announced last week.

"It's amazing," said Peter Rowland, an ARDEC spokesman. "I remember sitting there and thinking, wouldn't it be nice if we were eligible for the Baldrige, because it's the pinnacle award of this type. It's highly respected, globally."

The award, administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, was established by Congress in 1987 at a time when concerns about foreign competition and U.S. companies was on the rise. It honors companies that achieve high standards of performance management and product quality. The award involves a lengthy application and site-inspection process and does not have to be presented annually.

Despite the fact that federal agencies were not eligible for the award until this year, ARDEC Director Joseph Lannon said the agency had been working for many years to establish the performance measurements that won it the award.

"We've been at this for over 15 years," he said. "It's not something you can plan for overnight. It takes time, and it takes a culture change to accept the processes you put into place and get buy-in from the workforce…. We reached the tipping point a very short time ago."

Rowland said ARDEC had competed in the President's Quality Award process and used that as an incentive for implementing management programs like Total Quality Management and Lean Six Sigma.

Donelle Denery, who manages ARDEC's performance excellence programs, said the agency was able to promote new management programs by getting almost total participation from managers.

"When you have the room full of the 30 senior leaders and you ask who has taken Lean Six Sigma training and who has their certification, 98 percent of the hands in the room go up," she said. "We walk the talk."

Lannon said the arrival of a new generation of scientists and engineers also helped speed the transformation to a performance culture.

"They don't have the set practices that a seasoned workforce has," Lannon said. "They're ripe for change. That actually affects the dynamics of your whole organization. They bring challenges to the existing workforce that didn't exist before, and they bring tremendous amounts of energy. We looked at it as an opportunity."

Denery said because ARDEC employees are directly involved in producing weaponry for forces stationed overseas, they have strong incentives to embrace quality management programs.

"The employees at ARDEC have a real devotion to the customer," she said. "Our customers' lives depend on what we do for a living. They have a real line of sight to what they do every day."

Rowland said he hoped ARDEC's selection would challenge stereotypes of federal agencies as underperforming compared with the private sector.

"The fact that we have gone out and have actually achieved what we have by winning a Baldridge award, and we're a government organization, speaks volumes," he said. "They don't lower their standards for a government organization simply because the perspective is they're not quite up to snuff compared with some of our large corporations that have achieved great success and business excellence."

Lannon said Maj. Gen. Fred Robinson, ARDEC's commanding general, already has asked that the center share its practices through the service's laboratory system.

"We've gotten calls from multiple DoD organizations congratulating us and saying thank goodness we have a DoD winner, because it shows they can win with the best of industry," Denery said.