The Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) and the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program are two premier organizations aligning deeply in their mission of  “improving the performance, resilience, and long-term success of businesses” and “inspiring  a commitment to enterprise excellence through experiential learning by bringing people together to share, learn and grow.” 

The Baldrige Framework is a powerful tool for organizational excellence. The Baldrige Program was created in the 1980s when U.S. manufacturing needed to regain its competitive edge. Baldrige, the nation’s only public-private partnership dedicated to improving the performance, resilience, and long-term success of U.S. businesses and other organizations, provides a framework and comprehensive approach to improving organizational performance and obtaining sustainable results. 

The Association for Manufacturing Excellence, founded in 1985, plays a crucial role in continuous improvement as the premier organization for enterprise excellence. AME facilitates knowledge exchange in enterprise excellence, helps organizations explore Lean thinking, and creates opportunities for sharing best practices while focusing on people-centric leadership.  

I serve on the state board of the Baldrige-based Virginia/DC U.S. Senate Productivity and Quality Award and am a national Baldrige examiner. I will share how these two organizational approaches complement each other. Both frameworks create value in addressing modern manufacturing challenges, particularly in workforce development and retention. They help organizations create structured approaches to improvement through the Baldrige Framework and the AME Lean Sensei. 

The Baldrige framework helps manufacturers assess and improve their entire operation and helps integrate various improvement initiatives into a cohesive system. The model focuses on systematic improvement through a structured framework that evaluates seven key areas including operations and results, self-assessment processes that help identify gaps and opportunities, integration of leadership, strategy, and operations into a cohesive system and clear metrics for measuring and tracking performance improvements. 

The AME Lean Sensei is a self-assessment and benchmarking tool that helps organizations evaluate their lean practices by comparing them against the standards of AME Excellence Award recipients. This tool is designed to identify areas for improvement and guide organizations on their journey toward operational excellence. The tool provides links to relevant learning materials to support continuous improvement efforts.  

The real power comes from how they work together. While Baldrige offers the strategic framework and assessment tools, AME provides the practical implementation knowledge and peer-to-peer learning. Baldrige serves as the roadmap and AME as the experienced guides. Baldrige and AME help organizations design and improve key processes, create sustainable results, drive innovation, enhance workforce engagement and strengthen organizational competitiveness. 

Join us at the AME St. Louis 2025 International Conference to network with AME and Baldrige to learn more.