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Total Quality Management (TQM)

The Background To The European Quality Award

 

Introduction:

The model for the European Quality Award includes the whole company and all elements of the new management pyramid (the TQM pyramid). The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) initiated this Award. This yearly award is recognized as the most successful exponent of TQM in Europe for that particular year.

Eligibility:

The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) awards the European Quality Award to an applicant:

 

  • Who has demonstrated that their effort in the TQM area has contributed considerably to satisfy customers’ and employees’ expectations and also those of others with interest in the company in recent years.
  • An award winner is a company who enlightens the European market place.
  • It can be of any size or type, but its excellence through quality is a model to any other companies which can measure their own quality results and their own effort to obtain current improvements.

 

The effort made by European companies in this area ought to be improved in the light of the results found in the QED investigation. We realize that many European companies carry out auditing following their ISO 9000 certification but in our opinion this auditing is too narrow from a TQM point of view. The model for the European Quality Award comprises the whole company and all elements of the new management pyramid (the TQM pyramid) are included. This model opens up the possibility of a deeper and more varied auditing than that following the certification.

 

SIQ, the Swedish Institute for Quality:

  • SIQ, the Swedish Institute for Quality, points out that all companies which carry out a self-assessment based upon the criteria of the Swedish Quality Award are winners whether they win the Award or not.
  • They write: Through self-assessment the development of the company is stimulated.
  • The organization gets knowledge of where it stands and what can be improved.
  • Everybody who carries through such an assessment is winners as they have gained knowledge of their own strengths and weaknesses.
  • Employees in the whole organization have obtained new knowledge and a natural motivation for working with improvements is created.