By focusing on customers and safety, two Cargill businesses earned a total of three Malcolm Baldrige Awards in one decade. 

At Cargill, we challenge ourselves every day to be leaders in our industries and provide the highest quality service and products to our customers. We challenge ourselves to maintain safe, process-oriented workplaces, to continuously measure our success and to never stop learning. 

These are some of the same principles that the examiners for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award look for each year as they select the organizations that will receive the highest Presidential honor for innovation and performance excellence. The award is named after the Secretary of Commerce during the Reagan Administration, and is managed by Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in conjunction with the private sector.

Cargill’s first business to be honored with the Baldrige in 1999 was our egg business, Sunny Fresh Foods, now Cargill Kitchen Solutions. It was the first time a U.S. food company had ever received the Baldrige. Cargill Kitchen Solutions received the award for a second time in 2005.

Cargill Corporate Vice President Jerry Rose was president of Sunny Fresh Foods when we received the first Baldrige Award. Now, he’s chair of the Board of Overseers for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

“Our quest for business excellence, and our use of the Baldrige criteria as a systematic process to assess our progress, has done much to spur Cargill’s growth over the years,” says Rose. “Every Baldrige Award we’ve earned is a direct reflection of our commitment to serve our customers better every day.”

One area in which Cargill Kitchen Solutions scored high on the Baldrige exam was customer focus. For the first award, judges cited an employee survey that showed that 98.1 percent of the employees agreed with the statement: “I understand how my job affects the customer.”

Baldrige applicants are evaluated by an independent board of examiners and judges in seven areas:  

Most recently, Cargill Corn Milling, one of world’s leading producers of corn sweeteners and other value-added products, received the 2008 Malcolm Baldrige Award. Like the other two Baldrige awards, receiving a third honor took relentless determination and thousands of Cargill employees’ continuous hard work. 

As part of the evaluation process, Baldrige examiners visited nine corn milling facilities to interview and observe employees.

Icing on the cake 

“Earning the Baldrige is not about putting on a show to impress the examiners,” says Phil Forve, assistant vice president of Business Excellence at Cargill. “It’s very much business as usual. Cargill has to prove that we live the Baldrige principles every day.” 

While the recognition is nice, Forve says it is just the icing on the cake. “The cake is an organization that engages its employees, is a valuable member of the community and ultimately adds value to the customer,” he says.

Bringing home the Baldrige three times in a 10-year span is no small feat, but not enough for Cargill. We’re looking ahead, deepening our customer focus and always finding ways to do things better.