Story update 10/7/2010: We edited the last sentence of the first paragraph to reflect an amendment from the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program.

Known for the past 23 years as the Baldrige National Quality Program, the nation’s public-private partnership dedicated to performance excellence has changed its name to the “Baldrige Performance Excellence Program,” to highlight that mission. The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award will keep its name.

In an independent branding study performed in 2007, people and organizations involved with the Baldrige program indicated that the term “performance excellence” would better reflect the program’s mission and vision, according to Michael E. Newman, Baldrige program spokesperson.

“We had been considering the change for quite some time and because NIST has just realigned its focus areas, we thought this would be a good time to make the change,” says Newman.

The name change is part of an overall NIST realignment taking place this month. In an effort to make the agency more effective, NIST will address research topics as focus areas, as opposed to separate disciplines, according to Newman.

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