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Three U.S. Firms Recognized for Quality and Business Excellence
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Three U.S. Firms Recognized for Quality and Business Excellence
Two large manufacturers of aircraft and industrial gas turbines and a small manufacturer of identification and information labels were named the recipients of the 1998 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award on Nov. 17, 1998. The companies are: Boeing Airlift and Tanker Programs, Long Beach, Calif.; Solar Turbines Inc., San Diego, Calif.; and Texas Nameplate Co. Inc., Dallas, Texas. Texas Nameplate is the smallest Baldrige recipient ever at 66 employees.
Named after a former Secretary of Commerce, the MBNQA was established by Congress in 1987 to enhance the competitiveness of U.S. businesses by promoting quality awareness, recognizing quality and business achievements of U.S. companies, and publicizing these companies' successful performance strategies. The award is not given for specific products or services. Since 1988, 34 companies have received the Baldrige Award.
Baldrige Awards are given in manufacturing, service, small business, and, starting in 1999, education and health care. President Clinton and Commerce Secretary William Daley are expected to present the Baldrige Award to the 1998 recipient companies at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., early next year.
Further information on the 1998 Baldrige Award winners is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/news.htm, or by calling (301) 975-2762. Further information on the Baldrige National Quality Program is available on the WWW at http://www.quality.nist.gov, or by calling (301) 975-2036.
Media Contact:
Jan Kosko, (301) 975-2767
Summary of Summit on U.S. Standards Strategy Published
A summary of the recent national "standards summit," which explored options for advancing U.S. technology interests in international standards, an area of growing importance to the nation's export performance, is now available from the NIST Office of Standards Services.
Sponsored by NIST and the American National Standards Institute, the Sept. 23, 1998, meeting attracted more than 300 representatives from U.S. companies, federal agencies, and standards developing organizations. Participants examined the feasibility and challenge of devising a national standards strategy, given the tremendous diversity within the U.S. voluntary standards system. More than 600 organizations and consortia develop standards in the United States.
The new report summarizes keynote addresses made by Robert Mallett, deputy secretary of commerce; Dana Mead, chairman and chief executive officer of Tenneco; and Evangelos Vardakas, director of the European Commission's Directorate General for Industry. It also summarizes three roundtable discussions involving a total of 20 speakers representing a variety of organizational perspectives. More complete proceedings of the summit will be published later this year.
To obtain a copy of Toward a National Standards Strategy, Conference Summary Report (NISTIR 6259), contact Judith Baker, NIST, 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 2100, Gaithersburg, Md. 20899-2100, (301) 975-4000.
Media Contact:
Mark Bello, (301) 975-3776
One Competition Does It All for 1999
The 1999 Advanced Technology Program competition features a new structure to help ensure that each proposal will be carefully evaluated in competition with other proposals from the same technology area.
This year, to simplify the application procedure and encourage the broadest possible participation by industry, the ATP is conducting a single large competition rather than several competitions in different technology areas. The ATP will establish several independent technology-specific selection boards and assign each project proposal for review by the board most qualified to evaluate the proposal's merits.
The Advanced Technology Program provides funding on a cost-shared basis to industry to carry out research and development on high-risk, high-payoff emerging and enabling technologies. The program concentrates on those technologies that offer significant, broad-based benefits to the nation's economy but that are not likely to be developed in a timely fashion without the ATP's support because of the technical risks involved.
The ATP expects to have approximately $66 million available in fiscal year 1999 for first-year funding of new projects. Based on previous competitions, this would be expected to initiate innovative R&D projects with a joint industry/government investment of from $300 million to $450 million through 2003.
The ATP also has established a base line of $2,721 million in annual corporate revenues (including parent companies and related subsidiaries) to classify a company as a "large company" for purposes of ATP competitions in FY 1999. Under ATP rules large companies or their subsidiaries, competing for an ATP award as a single company, must provide cost-share funding of at least 60 percent of the annual total costs of the project.
The deadline for proposals to the 1999 ATP competition is 3 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, April 14, 1999.
Further information on the ATP, including copies of the new Proposal Preparation Kit (dated November 1998) and the competition announcement, is available by phone at (800) ATP-FUND (800-287-3863), by fax to (301) 926-9524 or (301) 590-3053, by e-mail to atp@nist.gov, or on the World Wide Web at http://www.atp.nist.gov.
Media Contact:
Michael Baum, (301) 975-2763
Three New Bibliographies of Electronics-Related Work Available
Persons interested in the optoelectronics, electronics and electromagnetic research programs of the NIST Boulder, Colo., laboratories will want copies of bibliographies of technical work in these divisions dating back to 1970. The first, Metrology for Radio-Frequency Technology: A Bibliography of NIST Publications (NISTIR 5075), lists published research from the Radio Frequency Technology Division (formerly the Electromagnetic Fields Division) between January 1970 and July 1998. Subject areas discussed include antennas, dielectric measurements, electromagnetic interference, microwave metrology, noise, remote sensing, time domain and waveform metrology. The second volume is A Bibliography of Publications of the NIST Electromagnetic Technology Division (NISTIR 5076). It lists the publications of this division from January 1970 through July 1998. Topics covered include cryoelectronic metrology, and superconductor and magnetic measurements. The third and final publication is Bibliography of the NIST Optoelectronics Division (NISTIR 5077). Subject areas covered include high-speed measurements, laser radiometry, fiber optic measurements, integrated optic measurements, optical fiber sensors, fiber and discrete components, dielectric materials and devices, and semiconductor materials and devices.
Copies of all three bibliographies are available at no charge from Sarabeth Harris, MC104, NIST, Boulder, Colo. 80303-3337, (303) 497-3237, sarabeth@boulder.nist.gov.
Media Contact:
Fred McGehan (Boulder), (303) 497-3246
February Workshop Tackles Conformity Assessment Issues
Proving that they meet the testing, inspection, product certification, and other requirements of foreign markets can be very costly and time consuming for U.S. exporters. At a national workshop to be held on Feb. 9, 1999, in Washington, D.C., U.S. companies, laboratories, regulatory bodies and other organizations will sort through the array of conformity assessment issues sometimes lurking as trade barriers, and then identify their top concerns.
Sponsored by NIST, the American National Standards Institute and ACIL (formerly, the American Council of Independent Laboratories), the all-day workshop will be held at D.C.'s Wyndham Hotel (1400 M St., N.W). It will respond to one of several consensus recommendations resulting from the September 1999 national "summit meeting" on international standards issues, hosted by NIST and ANSI. Many among the more than 300 people at that meeting stressed the need for efforts to simplify conformity assessment procedures and eliminate duplicative requirements.
Audits, testing requirements and other conformity assessment practices peculiar to regions and nations have emerged as important trade issues. Many exporters have complained that, as international agreements help to reduce tariff barriers, some countries are erecting technical obstacles in their place.
NIST Director Ray Kammer will be the keynote speaker at the February workshop. During the morning session, a series of expert panels will describe ongoing conformity assessment activities under way in the United States and in trading-partner nations. The afternoon session will be devoted to identifying priority issues and to proposing follow-up actions.
For more information on the workshop, contact Mary Jo DiBernardo, ACIL, 1629 K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006; (202) 887-5872; fax: (202) 887-0021 or Mary Saunders, NIST, 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 2100, Gaithersburg, Md. 20899-2100; (301) 975-2396; fax: (301) 963-2871.
Media Contact:
Mark Bello, (301) 975-3776
Decade of Metrology Research at Your Fingertips
Reprints of a decade of key papers by the Optical Frequency Measurement Group in NIST's Time and Frequency Division have been compiled and published as Precision Spectroscopy, Diode Lasers, and Optical Frequency Measurement (Technical Note 1504).
The papers describe work done over the past decade in the areas of diode lasers, frequency stabilization by optical and electronic techniques and by phase-locked loops, tunable lasers, optical synthesis, extended wavelength coverage, multiphoton interactions, and optical coherences. Several applications of diode lasers are described, such as an all-diode laser optical frequency reference using laser cooled and trapped atoms, detection of methane in air, high-sensitivity and high-accuracy spectroscopy, a 1one-gigahertz delay line oscillator, a demonstration of laser oscillation without population inversion, and others.
TN 1504 is available from the Time and Frequency Division, MC 847, NIST, Boulder, Colo. 80303-3337. For more information, call (303) 497-3276 or go to http://www.bldrdoc.gov/timefreq/ on the World Wide Web.
Media Contact:
Collier Smith (Boulder), (303) 497-3198
U.S.
Department of Commerce
Technology Administration
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Editor: Michael Newman
HTML conversion: Crissy Wines
Last updated: November
23, 1998
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