Purpose: This paper study the effect of the quality management on the performance among the manufacturing companies awarding the Korean National Quality Award(NQA). Methods: The data for 34 manufacturing companies are surveyed by the 7-point Likert scale and empirically tested. Results: Even among the companies awarding NQA for their excellent quality management level there are significant differences in their performance by their quality management levels. In particular, leadership and human resources categories have greater impacts on the performance. Conclusion: Even though the company awarded NQA(KQMA: Korean Quality Management Award) for its excellent quality management level, it is necessary to improve the quality management level continuously. This result supports the necessity of KQGA(Korean Quality Grand Award) which is awarded for the companies which improve quality management levels significantly after awarding KQMA.