The evening of 16 November 2004, Dr. Michael Rogowski, President of Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie, presented the German and European Quality Awards during a dedicated ceremony at the EFQM Forum in Berlin.
The European Quality Award is Europe’s most prestigious award for Organisational Excellence and is the top level of the EFQM Levels of Excellence, a European wide Recognition Scheme. It is open to every organisation in Europe and focuses on recognising Excellence and providing detailed, independent feedback to all Applicants to help them on their continuing journey towards Excellence.
2004 brings a variety of Applicants in terms of organisation size (30 people to over 30,000), and sector (schools, manufacturing, hotels, IT, services). This clearly shows that Excellence is flourishing in a wide range of organisations all over Europe. It is also encouraging and promising to count among them previous Award Winners, previous Prize Winners and repeat Applicants. This shows long term commitment to performing at the highest levels.
There are three main levels of recognition available to Applicants for the European Quality Award.
1. The European Quality Award is presented to the organisation judged to be the best in each of the Award categories. Award Winners are exceptional organisations - they are European or global role models in their approaches and the results they achieve. As these are exceptional organisations, the independent jury does not always identify an Award Winner in each category, further increasing the prestige for those who reach this level.
The 2004 Award Winners are:
oYELL, United Kingdom - Award Winner and Prize Winner in Leadership and Constancy of Purpose and in People Development and Involvement - Large Businesses and Business Units category YELL is the first organisation to win the Award for a second time - truly the benchmark for Sustainable Excellence. Yell was a previous winner in 1999 and this is the first year that the company was eligible to apply again.
oKocaeli Chamber of Industry, Turkey - Award Winner and Prize Winner in People Development and Involvement - Public Sector Category
2. The Special Prizes are presented to organisations that are good overall and excel in one or more of the eight Fundamental Concepts of Excellence. These Special Prizes identify and celebrate specific role models that could help others to learn and improve. It is possible for an organisation to win more than one Special Prize. It is also possible that the jury could decide to award more than one winner in a Special Prize category.
In addition to the Award Winners overleaf, the 2004 Special Prize Winners are:
Large Organisations and Business Units
oSiemens AG Power Transmission and Distribution, Germany - Prize Winner in Results Orientation
Operational Units
oTNT Post Group Information Systems, United Kingdom - Prize Winner in People Development and Involvement for the second year running.
oT-Systems Development Centre South West GmbH, Germany - Prize Winner in Customer Focus and in People Development and Involvement
Public Sector
oColegio Ursulinas - Vitoria, Spain - Prize Winner in Leadership and Constancy of Purpose
Independent SME
oFonderie del Montello S.p.A., Italy - Prize Winner in Leadership and Constancy of Purpose
oHunziker and Co, Switzerland - Prize Winner in People Development and Involvement
oSchindlerhof Klaus Kobjoll GmbH, Germany - Prize Winner in People Development and Involvement
Subsidiary SME
oEMAR Satis Sonrasi Musteri Hismetleri A.S., Turkey - Prize Winner in Results Orientation
o SKF Trk Sanayi ve Ticaret Ltd.STI, Turkey - Prize Winner in Corporate Social Responsibility and in People Development and Involvement
3. Each year, Finalists may be declared in each category. The Finalists are organisations that demonstrate a high degree of Excellence in the management of quality as their fundamental process for continuous improvement.
Including the organisations listed above, the 2004 Finalists are:
Large Organisations and Business Units
Knorr-Bremse Systems for Commercial Vehicle, Germany
Solvay Pharma, Spain
TNT Express
Operational Units
T-Systems Multimedia Solutions GmbH, Germany
Public Sector
Lauaxeta Ikastola Sociedad Cooperativa, Spain
This has been a good year for the European Quality Award; the overall standard is amongst the highest we have ever seen. The 2004 Applicants cover 16 different European countries, the widest spread of country representation in five years. In some of these countries, more than one organisation is being recognised as a winner or a finalist.
Recognition is a vital element in EFQM’s approach and is an integral part of the EFQM Excellence Model. The primary reason for running a European Quality Award is to identify and encourage the learning and sharing among peers from European organisations, independently from industry, sector, and country. The Special Prizes aid this goal as they produce more specific role models from which organisations can learn. The next phase will be to document these good practices and make them available to the business community through various EFQM products and services available to our Members, such as the Good Practice Database, Excellence One, the EFQM News or Benchmarking projects.
2004 European Quality Award: the Winners announced
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