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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