Press Release July 26, 2011 Ohio Partnership for Excellence to Expand Programs to Indiana & West Virginia COLUMBUS, OH - The Ohio Partnership for Excellence (OPE) is now approved to offer its Baldrige-based programs to organizations in Indiana and West Virginia. The Alliance for Performance Excellence approved the expansion after a nation-wide competitive process that included proposals from a number of states. The Alliance is a non-profit network of national, state and local Baldrige-based award programs, associated with the American Society for Quality and the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards & Technology that administers the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. OPE is Ohio's Baldrige-based award program that administers and presents the Ohio Awards for Excellence, including the Governor's Award for Excellence. OPE partners with organizations using the internationally-recognized Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. OPE's primary product is a comprehensive organizational assessment that helps leaders better understand and prioritize key strengths and opportunities for improvement. While the assessment lays the foundation, OPE's main focus is on organizational learning, resource optimization and continuous improvement. Under the visionary leadership of OPE's Board Chairman Frank Pérez, former President & CEO of the Kettering Health Network in Dayton and Paul Worstell, former President of PRO-TEC Coating Company in Leipsic, OPE has worked tirelessly to develop a strategy which will give Indiana and West Virginia organizations the same great opportunities OPE has afforded Ohioans for more than a decade. With this decision, OPE will grow into a regionalized program throughout all three states.     The mission of OPE is to cultivate performance excellence and continuous improvement among business, education, government, healthcare and non-profit organizations. By providing a framework for performance excellence through the Baldrige Criteria, organizations have a greater focus on customers, process management, work systems and organization-wide results. These organizations typically see lower costs, improved productivity and rises in both employee and customer satisfaction. This year's OPE Award recipients will be honored at the annual Quest for Success Conference - "Harvesting Excellence" to be held on September 19-20 at Cherry Valley Lodge, Newark, Ohio. The two-day conference will feature four of the seven 2010 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipients and will provide numerous opportunities to learn about role-model performance management practices, share great ideas with colleagues, and benchmark world-class results. For additional information, contact: Al Faber, President/CEO al.faber@partnershipohio.org Phone (614) 425-7157