About Us

The developer and creator of the HPO21 Institute brand and its intellectual property is a management consulting firm named AfCI LLC (Alliance for Continuous Improvement). The owners of AfCI are Chuck and Barbara Mitchell who live in Bradenton, Florida. AfCI owns 100% of all copyrights, trademarks and brands associated with the HPO21 Institute, its products and services, and its web site and sales materials.

In 1992, Chuck Mitchell (current owner of AfCI LLC) created the first version of HPO21 based on the a program administered by the Department of Commerce. The Baldrige Criteria is a program used to invite public and private organizations to submit applications for annual performance excellence awards.Mr. Mitchell re-engineered the Baldrige Criteria into practical policies, practices and tools that he integrated into a system now referred to as "HPO21™", which stands for High Performance Organizations for the 21st Century. The early version of HPO21 (referred to as CI-Toolkit™) became an award-winning system that was popular with a variety of business and government customers.From 1992 to 2003 this system was licensed to over 20,000 users located at approximately 1160 customer sites. See Customers