Baldrige Award Recipient

One of the 1995 Manufacturing Award Recipients of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award was Corning Incorporated. The April 8th 2008 issue of Forbes. com published an article titled, “Out of the Gate: Corning Inches Up” which is the article that I am reviewing for this assignment. Some of the main points of the article included that Corning shares were going up suggesting that the strong demand for their liquid crystal display glass panels contributed to this rise.

It was mentioned that the Corning stock was upgraded from “neutral” to “outperform. ” The New York based company is noted to be the world’s largest maker of LCD glass used in flat-screen televisions and computers. Since television sales are healthiest in U. S, China, Japan, Europe and Russia, these countries are said to be contributing the most to that growth. The article noted while broader stock markets are on the decline, Corning is continuing to rise. I found this article interesting for various reasons.

While many people may see a successful company as one that makes a profit on a regular basis, the qualities of this company which may get ignored or are unknown to some, created the opportunities within that continues to challenge its employees to perform their best and the end result is a successful company, not the other way around. Corning encourages creativity in its employees and thus creating its own success by the quality of the company’s foundation and principles.
Due to some of the reasons a company receives attention and awards such as the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, is that the company’s practices awards those within that in turn strengthen the company. For example, this company awards and encourages employees with creativity and future vision, thus currently they are in the lead in the area of liquid crystal display glass panels. Corning didn’t hop on the bandwagon mid-stream, they were entrepreneurs in this area.
When members of their team suggested this would be something worth developing years ago, those members were listened to and it has paid off and is continuing to pay off for Corning. While many in the public may see Corning as making profits at a time when few are, it was actually a more committed decision of conducting research into this long before others and then having time to refine their products when others just begin to recognize the value of this product.
The author just stated the facts in this article of Corning’s stocks, so therefore was very objective in all of his/her (author’s name not given) points. The article was uninfluenced by any emotion by the author. However, knowing more about this company than this article, to me the end product shows that whether or not one sees it as such, valuing, motivating and encouraging one’s employees can be time worthwhile in the end for a company.
Any awards a company gets are always partly due to its employees, so the more a company can communicate and demonstrate this to their employees, the more motivated employees seem to be to add to the success of their company (ies). Reference Out of the Gate: Corning Inches Up. (2008, April 08). Retrieved April 22, 2008, from http://www. forbes. com/feeds/ap/2008/04/08/ap4866495. html