Boeing Receives Top Team Excellence Award for Second Consecutive Year
Teams Honored at ASQ World Conference

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, May 9, 2008 — The Boeing Company took top honors winning the Gold Award in the 23rd International Team Excellence Award Process at the ASQ World Conference on Quality and Improvement, held May 5-7, in Houston, Texas. A rigorous finalist competition included 26 teams from around the world, vying for international recognition and the ASQ Gold, Silver, and Bronze Awards.

“Boeing is elated to be awarded this top honor for the second year in a row. The team worked hard and demonstrated team value and excellence as they achieved world-class quality status,” said Donald Pitcher, director of Production Ops Fuselage IPT for Boeing.

The award winners were recognized in a rousing ceremony at this year’s conference in Houston:

2008 International Team Excellence Awards

Gold Winner
Company: Boeing C–17 Program, Long Beach, California
Team: Universal Splice Machine Project Team
Project: The Universal Splice Machine is a mobile, automated system that uses electro-magnets to clamp details as it drills and sets fasteners along one of the major splices in the tail section of Boeing's C-17 aircraft. This new device eliminates the strenuous hand drilling and setting of nearly 4,000 fasteners.

Silver Winner
Company: Healthways, Nashville, Tennessee
Team: Improving Member Contact Rate Team
Project: This project used specific Lean Six Sigma tools and methodologies to improve clinician productivity and overall member contact levels in a healthcare telephonic delivery model. This resulted in $3.3 million in cost avoidance and improved utilization and clinical outcomes.

Bronze Winner
Company: Bayer MaterialScience LLC, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Team: Optimizing the TL/LTL Decision for BMS
Project: Bayer MaterialScience launched the truckload/less than truckload optimization project to establish a lean, statistically sound basis for choosing the "best value" carriers for its business needs. Applying tools such as FMEA, the project resulted in a visual workplace that simplified decision-making for logistics representatives and reduced line haul freight costs by more than $500,000 in 2007.

Since 1985, more than 830 teams from Canada, China, Costa Rica, India, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Singapore, Colombia and the United States have participated in this outstanding process. Well-known companies such asKaiser Permanente and Sterlite Industries have showcased proven results with long-term implications, resulting in cost-savings of millions of dollars. This year’s team finalists’ savings resulted in a combined total of more than $13.5 million.
Next year’s International Team Excellence Award Process Final Round will be held at ASQ’s World Conference on Quality and Improvement at the Minneapolis Convention Center in Minneapolis, Minn. For information on how to participate in the 2009 International Team Excellence Award Process, visit http://wcqi.asq.org or e-mail gbalagopal@asq.org.

The American Society for Quality, www.asq.org, has been the world's leading authority on quality for more than 60 years. With more than 93,000 individual and organizational members, the professional association advances learning, quality improvement and knowledge exchange to improve business results, and to create better workplaces and communities worldwide. As champion of the quality movement, ASQ offers technologies, concepts, tools and training to quality professionals, quality practitioners, and everyday consumers, encouraging all to Make Good Great®. ASQ has been the sole administrator of the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award since 1991. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wis., the 60-year-old organization is a founding partner of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), a prominent quarterly economic indicator, and also produces the Quarterly Quality Report.