Excellence Model

From the EuropeanFoundationForQualityManagement site:

: The EFQM Excellence Model is a non-prescriptive framework based on nine criteria. Five of these are ‘Enablers’ and four are ‘Results’. The ‘Enabler’ criteria cover what an organization does. The ‘Results’ criteria cover what an organization achieves. ‘Results’ are caused by ‘Enablers’.
: The Model, which recognizes there are many approaches to achieving sustainable excellence in all aspects of performance, is based on the premise that:
: Excellent results with respect to Performance, Customers, People, and Society are achieved through PartnershipsResourcesAndProcesses.

An EFQM audit is, typically, a traumatic event for a company, especially its managers. The management is audited separately from the staff, and at the higher levels, the customers, suppliers and financial stakeholders are also asked, separately, their opinion of the company.

The audit I saw seriously shook up the management, since their assessment of the company was strongly divergent from the staff's. Strongly. This is, apparently, not unusual. The two strengths of this model over ISO/EIC/BSI/whatever is that it does speak very clearly about whether or not your processes are any good (satisfy you stakeholders), rather than just defined, conformed-to, improved, etc, and that's fine even if you are producing chocolate bars with broken glass in them. -- KeithBraithwaite

CategoryQuality