Mate Precision Tooling Receives 2005 Minnesota Quality Award


Anoka, Minnesota: The Minnesota Council For Quality announced today that it has presented Mate Precision Tooling, world-leading manufacturer of punch press tooling, with the 2005 Minnesota Quality Award.

Brian Lassiter, president, Minnesota Council For Quality, made the announcement and stated, "Mate was ranked in the top 20 percent of all companies that apply for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which is an impressive achievement." The Minnesota Quality Award (MQA) is a major step for Mate in seeking the Malcolm Baldrige Award.

Founded in 1991, the primary objective of the Minnesota Quality Award is to help organizations improve their performance results. The Award also serves to recognize performance excellence throughout Minnesota. The Minnesota Quality Award is given at four levels - Excellence (the top award), Achievement, Advancement and Commitment - and is the culmination of a rigorous assessment process that utilizes the Baldrige National Quality Program's "Criteria For Performance Excellence."

Since 1991, just 70 organizations have received Minnesota Quality Award recognition at various levels, Mate being the most recent. Mate received the Achievement level. Just 18 percent of the organizations that have applied since the MQA adopted the tiered award structure have scored this well.

"We are extremely pleased and grateful for the effort Mate employees put forth to achieve this Award," stated Dean Sundquist, Chairman and CEO of Mate. "Our primary business objective is to make Mate the world's leading supplier of precision tooling for CNC punch presses. Our worldwide growth and this Minnesota Quality Award are evidence that we are achieving our goals. The process to achieve this award provides tools to help us reach the highest level of efficiency, service and quality, all to the benefit of our thousands of customers around the world."

The process Mate underwent to achieve the award was very rigorous and involved over two thousand man-hours. Mate developed a Baldrige application that addressed the nineteen Criteria For Performance Excellence. The application is submitted to the Minnesota Council for Quality and six trained Baldrige evaluators conducted a three-day site visit at Mate, evaluating the company's business processes and results. The MQA process provides comprehensive feedback that outlines the company's strengths and improvement opportunities along several dimensions. These include leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, measurement, analysis and knowledge management, human resource focus, process management, and business results. Feedback on these dimensions is used for organizational learning, planning and improvement.

Mate Precision Tooling began in 1962 and has grown to be a world leader in the manufacture of punch press tooling. The company designs, manufacturers and markets multiple lines of tooling products for CNC punch presses and has gained a world-wide reputation for excellence in quality, delivery and service. Mate sells tooling in all industrial countries worldwide, with nearly 50 percent of its market outside the United States. Mate is headquartered in new ultra high-tech facilities in Anoka and has other facilities in Sweden, Germany, Malaysia and China.
For more information on Mate, go to www.mate.com.

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