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Business Excellence including the Florida Sterling Award
(sometimes referred to as TQM - Total Quality Management)

ISOtec & Business Excellence

ISOtec's consultants have many years' experience of successfully assisting companies in their Business Excellence programs through using both Business Excellence training workshops and in direct consulting. In addition to this, our consultants have been part of the assessment teams for both of the Hong Kong TQM awards - the Hong Kong Industry Award for Quality and the Hong Kong Management Association Quality Award - including developing assessment criteria based on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

ISOtec's consultants have successfully helped two major companies to win the Baldrige-based Hong Kong Award for Quality. The winning companies were:

• The Mass Transit Railway Corporation (MTRC) operating Hong Kong’s $multi-billion subway system. Their business interests include developing and managing major commercial, residential and industrial properties; and company administration such as restaurants, security, and health center.. The MTRC is considered to be the most successful and profitable mass transit system worldwide. Further information can be found on their web page at  www.mtrcorp.com

• The Kowloon Canton Railway Corporation (KCRC) operating Hong Kong’s $multi-billion above ground railway system. Like the MTRC, KCRC also manages other interests including major commercial and residential properties. The KCRC is now embarking on one of the largest railway expansion projects in the world including significant expansion into Mainland China. Their web page is at www.kcrc.com

ISOtec's consultants are examiners for the Florida Sterling Award. The Florida Sterling Award is the Governor's award to Florida State businesses that have achieved the status of role models for organizational performance excellence. The award promotes awareness of performance excellence as an increasingly important element in competitiveness; and the information sharing of successful performance strategies and the benefits derived from using these strategies.

What is Business Excellence?

Business Excellence is a self-imposed and self-assessed approach to improving your organization's effectiveness, competitiveness and flexibility of the business as a whole.  It is a quality process that involves all employees in all departments of your organization working together through the understanding of all activities to eliminate error and improve the process towards the achievement of business excellence.

Although some companies have developed their own Business Excellence criteria (e.g. the Xerox management model), most companies find it useful to assess their performance against internationally recognized quality models such as the Malcolm Baldrige Award or the European Quality Award. The criteria for the Florida Sterling Award is based on the Malcolm Baldrige criteria as these are recognized as the world-class standard for organizational excellence.

A first step for any company setting out on the business excellence journey is to carry out a self assessment based on one of  the business excellence models. This assessment will confirm your organizations strengths and focus on your opportunities for improvement. Typically the criteria focus on seven main areas of organizational performance as follows:

• Leadership - organizational leadership and public responsibility / citizenship;
• Strategic Planning - development and deployment;
• Customer and Market Focus - market knowledge and customer satisfaction and relationship;
• Information & Analysis - measurement and analysis of organizational performance;
• Human Resource Development - work systems, training and employee satisfaction;
• Process Management - product process, support  process, supplier processes;
• Business Results - Customer, Financial, Human Resource, Supplier and Organizational.

Although some modern management systems can be very complex, ISOtec's experience and expertise across a wide spectrum of industry is available to assist you at all stages of your business excellence process from initial assessment through to planning, implementing and achieving your business excellence system. ISOtec can help you simplify your organization's business excellence program by dividing it up into a series of individual projects. Most models use the the "Plan-Do-Check-Act" cycle for continuous improvement.

For the Florida Sterling Award, ISOtec can assist you at all stages of your application from initial start to successful achievement including:

• filling in your own Navigator; through to
• making a Challenge application; or even
• applying for the Governor's Sterling Award

For companies who are only in the early stages of  continuous improvement, the business excellence criteria may be so overwhelming that it does not meet the needs of the organization. For these organizations, the international standards for management systems - ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 - set out the methods by which a management system can be developed and documented; and a well documented quality system is the first step towards TQM and business excellence.

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