U.S. Commerce Secretary John Bryson today named four organizations—three health care operations and one nonprofit business—as recipients of the 2011 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest Presidential honor for performance excellence through innovation, improvement and visionary leadership. This marks the first year that three health care organizations have been selected at one time.

The 2011 Baldrige Award recipients—listed with their category—are:

Donald J. Wheeler has been awarded the Deming Medal by the American Society for Quality (ASQ) for “the propagation of Dr. Deming’s ideas throughout the world through his numerous books and seminars on quality management and statistical quality improvement.” Here he answers some questions for Quality Digest Daily.

Yoshio Kondo, Ph.D., a quality management leader who stressed the interrelationship between quality and people, died April 1, 2011, at the age of 87.

According to professor Samuel Ho and Christopher Fung, Ph.D., authors of the TQM

Forty or 50 years ago, when you sat down in front of, or picked up, a dimensional measurement tool, you immediately recognized that a certain amount of knowledge and skill was required to use it. The measurement operation was almost always completely manual, and even reading and interpreting the readings was an acquired skill. In addition, it was largely understood that precise measurements needed to be taken in a controlled environment on a stable surface. A skilled measurement specialist was half engineer, half craftsman (or half Houdini).