The main objective of this article is to demonstrate and inform how a small and privately held company received the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 2006 in the small business category Mesa Products Inc started as a one man service company more than 25 years ago and at the moment that this article was written had a workforce of only 70 this small company was the recipient of the Baldrige award back in 2006 This award is the highest U S presidential honor for organizational performance excellence How this small business accomplished to be the recipient of this award it s discussed in the article Mesa Products Inc was founded in 1979 by Terry F May the one man show which this article refers to the one who managed the company to go from a one service operation to a nationwide provider and who still is the president of Mesa This company design manufactures and installs cathodic protection systems for underground piping tanks and other metallic structures for corrosion prevention The Mesa performance improvement is rooted in its Quality Management System or QMS that is based on ISO 9001 certification The company uses various improvement processes that are built around methods like PDCA plan do check act cycle lean and Six Sigma Their QMS based on ISO 9001 combines with the Baldrige criteria to link business processes in an integrated aligned direction that results in performance excellence
