U.S., Japan Honor AT&T; With 2 Awards : Telecommunications: The company wins the federal Baldrige Award. It is second U.S. firm to get Japan’s Deming Prize.
In honors that company officials say underscore their leadership in the burgeoning telecommunications field, AT&T; won two of the world’s most prestigious business awards Tuesday.
In Washington, the long-distance carrier’s Consumer Communications Services unit in Basking Ridge, N.J., won the federal government’s Malcolm Baldrige Award for excellence in quality management among service companies. Also honored in the service category was GTE Directories Corp. of Dallas, a telephone book manufacturer.
Tuesday’s honor was AT&T;’s third Baldrige award in two years.
Meanwhile, in a decision that was scheduled to be announced today in Tokyo, AT&T; Power Systems--which produces devices to power computer and telecommunications equipment--became only the second U.S. firm to win Japan’s prestigious Deming Prize for Quality.
“Receiving these awards is like winning the World Series and the World Cup on the same day,” said Robert E. Allen, AT&T; chairman.
“The information industry is a leading global industry and we are very proud for being recognized as the world-class leader,” said Joseph P. Nacchio, president of AT&T;’s consumer services unit.
“We are getting so good that people now expect to pick up the phone and make a long-distance call and have it go through” every time, Nacchio said.
Both Nacchio and Curt Crawford, president of AT&T; power systems, said they plan to trumpet their awards in future marketing efforts, but both emphasized that the benefit of the award was the incentive it provided AT&T; employees to excel and improve.
Although Wall Street is usually unmoved by such events, the awards could help secure long-distance market share, said Betty Massick, an analyst at S.G. Warburg & Co. in New York.
“Anytime you can put a ‘Good Housekeeping’ seal of approval on any consumer product, you get higher (sampling) rates and greater visibility,” said Richard Nespola, a Leawood, Kan., telephone consultant.
Though the Baldrige and Deming awards aren’t well-known outside the business community, they are highly coveted, even though it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to apply for the honors.
Established by Congress in 1987, the Baldrige Award, named after the late Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige, is loosely modeled after the older Deming Prize. That award was established in 1951 by the Union of Japanese Scientists to honor W. Edwards Deming, an American whose quality methods reportedly helped Japanese companies achieve commercial success after World War II.
A string of Japanese companies, including Toyota, NEC and Matsushita, have previously won the Deming Prize. But Florida Power & Light, which won in 1989, was the only other U.S. company besides AT&T; to win.
