I hope you have had a great start to the New Year and your plans and wishes for 2012 come true.
 
Here at COER we are gearing up for an outstanding year (we are always positive!) – the highlight is expected to be the World Business Capability Congress, December 5-7, 2012, Auckland, New Zealand.  If you have not been to New Zealand before then this is an excellent opportunity to combine a world-class conference with a visit to one of the most beautiful and stunning countries on earth!!!
 
The theme for the Congress is:  “Driving Excellence> Innovation> Productivity> Export Growth”
 
We are now “Calling for Papers” – this is your chance to speak at a major international conference and share your experience, best practices or your leading edge management research. Submit your Abstract/Bio right now…
 
This is an opportunity for
 
a) Academics to present peer-reviewed conference papers and get them fast-tracked into leading journals (such as • Q-NewZ Magazine • TQM Journal • Measuring Business Excellence Journal • International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management • International Benchmarking Journal • International Journal of TQM and Business Excellence)
 
b) Business employees, managers, CEOs, consultants to present and share best practices (perhaps for the first time at a major conference)
 
This Congress is combining the International Benchmarking Conference, New Zealand Organisation for Quality Conference, and the New Zealand Business Excellence Awards.
 
The Congress organisers are the Centre for Organsiational Excellence Research and  New Zealand Organisation for Quality with key partners the New Zealand Business Excellence Foundation (New Zealand Business Excellence Awards), Asia Network for Quality, Asia Pacific Quality Organization, Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development, BPIR.com Limited, Economic Development Agencies New Zealand,  Global Benchmarking Network,  Institute of Management Consultants New Zealand, Ministry of Economic Development and New Zealand Institute of Management.
 
To help to make the Congress even bigger and better we are now calling for Sponsors. If you think your organization may benefit from exposure to 1,000’s of decision makers please let me know.

Dr. Robin Mann
BPIR.com

Next year in December New Zealand will host a premier business improvement-orientated congress. New Zealand Organisation for Quality (NZOQ) and Centre for Organisational Excellence Research (COER) are organising the World Business Capability Congress Incorporating the 27th NZOQ Conference, 7th International Benchmarking Conference and New Zealand Business Excellence Awards in Auckland.

The main theme of the congress is “Driving Excellence> Innovation> Productivity> Export Growth” and in line with that theme the conference organising committee is seeking contributions from organisations and individuals about Developing Business Capability, Leadership, Strategy, Customer and Market Focus, Measurement, Analysis and Knowledge Management, Human Resource Focus, and Process Management. The best papers will be considered for the Best Paper Award, and fast-tracked for publication in one of the local or international journals.

Abstracts for papers will be due by 1st of April 2012 and the early registration deadline will be 1 July 2012. The congress website is available at WorldBusinessCapabilityCongress.com and more details on abstract submission and registration is posted there, please visit the website periodically as it evolves and more details become available, also you can also download the congress flyer from here .

The World Business Capability Congress 2012 is a not to be missed event, make sure you include this conference in your diary and travel plans for 2012.

Ahmed Abbas
BPIR.com

U.S. Commerce Secretary John Bryson today named four organizations -three health care operations and one nonprofit business- as recipients of the 2011 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest Presidential honor for performance excellence through innovation, improvement and visionary leadership. This marks the first year that three health care organizations have been selected at one time.
The winning recipients -listed with their category- are:

The 2011 Baldrige Award recipients were selected from a field of 69 applicants. All of the applicants were evaluated rigorously by an independent board of examiners in seven areas defined by the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence: leadership; strategic planning; customer focus; measurement, analysis and knowledge management; workforce focus; operations focus; and results.

The award is managed as part of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program (BPEP) by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in cooperation with the private sector Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

A forthcoming economic study prepared for BPEP documents the practical benefits of the Baldrige program. Of the 273 Baldrige Award applicants since 2006, the study finds, the benefits to these organizations on three levels -cost savings, customer satisfaction and financial gain- outweighed the overall cost of the BPEP by a ratio of 1,252-to-1.

Named after Malcolm Baldrige, the 26th Secretary of Commerce, the Baldrige Award was established by Congress in 1987 to enhance the competitiveness and performance of U.S. businesses. Originally, three types of organizations were eligible: manufacturers, service companies and small businesses. Congress expanded the program in 1999 to include education and health care organizations, and again in 2007 to include nonprofit organizations such as charities, trade and professional associations, and government agencies. The award promotes excellence in organizational performance, recognizes the achievements and results of U.S. organizations, and publicizes successful performance strategies.

For more details, see the Nov. 22, 2011 news announcement, “Four U.S. Organizations Honored with the 2011 Baldrige National Quality Award” at www.nist.gov/baldrige/baldrige_recipients2011.cfm. For more information on the BPEP, go to www.nist.gov/baldrige.

 

Co-founder of BPIR.com Limited, Dr Robin Mann, was awarded the Harrington/Ishikawa Medal for 2011 at the Asian Pacific Quality Organisation’s Dinner in Singapore, 17 October. This award is given annually to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of quality in the Asia Pacific region.

 

 

Dr Robin Mann walking on stage to receive the Medal from Dr James Harrington. Also, representing the APQO were Shan Ruprai (Australia), Chuck Aubrey (United States), Dr Ahmad Mohd Magad (Singapore), and Dr Miflora Gatchalian (Philippines).

Business Excellence Chile specialise in business excellence, benchmarking and strategic management consultancy, They are a member of the Global Benchmarking Network and BPIR’s partner in Chile. Their first English newsletter is published below. It includes an interview with Orlando Olivera the General Secretary of the National Quality Award.

 

 

Nine organisations have won the prestigious business excellence awards by Spring Singapore during the 3rd Business Excellence Global Conference.

This year, the Singapore Quality Award (SQA) with Special Commendation was given to the Institute of Technical Education and Subordinate Courts of Singapore, both previous SQA winners.

The SQA with Special Commendation is presented to past SQA winners who have done better since winning the award at least five years ago.

With 9 winners of 2011 awards this year is largest number of winners since the award was presented in 1995.

 

Projects are a way of transforming strategies into actions and objectives into reality. For this reason project management is an essential tool needed in all organisations. The right balance between project management elements can enable organisations to complete projects on time, on budget, and with high quality results. 

According to Gartner Group projects worldwide cost their owners many millions of dollars more than were budget for, and surprisingly almost half don't meet their clients' expectations!

The article below by Dr. James Harrington , one of the world’s leading thinkers on quality and business management, describes the elements of a successful project.

 

This post is the second in an ongoing series about organizational excellence, which consists of five elements. The first two are process management and project management.

Processes define how organizations function, and projects are the means by which organizations improve those processes. We define a project as a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service. For project management, we apply knowledge, skills, tools and technology to activities to meet or exceed stakeholders’ needs and project expectations.

Although this seems straightforward enough, it can’t be so simple, or we’d see better results from the projects we fund. The Standish Group International reports that “corporate America spends more than $275 billion a year on application software development projects, many of which will fail due to lack of skilled project management.”

“The average cycle time for IT projects is 27 weeks,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “The ones that are cancelled are cancelled after 14 weeks; at that point, they’re 52-percent complete. Many of the project teams know that the project is likely to fail six weeks before it’s cancelled.”

Similarly, the Gartner Group reports that “in a four-year period, an application development organization of 100 developers can expect to spend more than $10 million on cancelled contracts.”

Most organizations’ projects are mission-critical activities, and delivering quality products on time is nonnegotiable. Even with IT projects, things have changed. The old paradigm was, “Get it out fast and fix the bugs as the customer finds them,” (i.e., the Microsoft approach). The new paradigm is, “Get them out at Web speed and error-free.” Benchmark organizations complete 90 percent of their projects within 10 percent of budget and on schedule. Information systems organizations that establish standards for project management, including a project office, cut their major project cost overruns, delays and cancellations by 50 percent.

Let’s look at why projects fail. First, they fail to adhere to committed schedules due to variances, exceptions, poor planning, delays and scope creep. Projects also fail from poor resource utilization, including lack of proper skills, poor time utilization and misalignment of skills and assignments. Often, an organization’s portfolio of projects isn’t managed correctly because the wrong projects are selected, high-risk projects aren’t identified or the interdependencies between projects are poorly controlled. Finally, projects fail due to a loss of intellectual and/or knowledge capital, including lack of means to transfer knowledge, and people leaving the organization.

Poor project management is one of the biggest problems facing organizations today. It’s therefore surprising that quality professionals haven’t addressed improvements in the project management process. Even ISO 9001 ignores this critical issue. Yet, in our knowledge-driven economy, an organization’s success depends upon the quality of its project management process.

Our general attitude toward project management is similar to quality management: Everyone thinks he or she knows what quality is and therefore assumes that anyone can manage it. But just as quality managers are special professionals with very specific skills and training, so are project managers. They require skill, training and effective leadership specifically related to project management.

The ability to manage one project is no longer sufficient; organizations need managers who can handle a portfolio of projects, selecting those that will succeed and bring the biggest return on investments. This requires an effective online reporting system that summarizes a project’s status at least once a week, if not daily. The executive team must also have access to project archives in order to compare proposed project estimates against actual costs and cycle-time data from completed projects. Management wouldn’t approve one-third of the projects proposed if it knew how long they’d take or cost. As John Carrow, CEO of Unisys Corp., says, “The best time to stop a project that you don’t know is going to be successful is when you start it.”

Far too often a quality department will undertake a major project such as Six Sigma, TQM or reengineering without the necessary project management skills. Basic tools such as work breakdown structure aren’t used. Neither is risk analysis, let alone reasonable mitigation plans. Is it any wonder that the failure rate in quality programs is so high?

The project management body of knowledge defines 69 tools a project manager must master. Few of the project managers with whom I’ve come in contact have mastered all of them, and only a few project managers are certified by their peers as having done so.

As you start your next project, my suggestion is: Don’t start it without a certified project manager.

Asia Pacific Quality Organization (APQO) recently announced The World Class Winners of the Global Performance Excellence Award (GPEA).

In its eleventh year, The Global Performance Excellence Award honour organisations for outstanding performance and leadership in business excellence. The award winners will receive their award at the Business Excellence Global Conference, 17-20 October, Singapore, http://www.begcapqc.com. The Singapore Productivity Association (SPA) and SPRING Singapore in collaboration with Asia Pacific Quality Organization (APQO) and Asian Productivity Organization (APO) is organizing the 3rd Business Excellence Global Conference & 17th Asia Pacific Quality Conference, with the theme 'Productivity - Enabling Business Excellence.

The Award demonstrates the APQO commitment to business excellence and continual improvement through promoting quality initiatives to organisations of Asia and the Pacific region and helping them to be a global benchmark of business excellence.

Dr Robin Mann, Chairman of the Global Benchmarking Network and Founder of BPIR.com Limited, will be congratulating all the award winners. To help them maintain their exemplar status and inspire others each winner will be allocated free passwords to the BPIR.com – a leading benchmarking, best practice and business excellence resource.

Below is the press release.

Ahmed Abbas
BPIR.com

Four organisations have won top honours for their success in the pursuit of business excellence. The four winners of 2010 Singapore Business Excellence Awards include a school and three public sector organisations.

2010 Singapore Quality Award Winner:

• Singapore Civil Defence Force: The first SQA winner is the Singapore Civil Defence Force, which is a second time SQA winner, having first won this award in 2005.

• Hwa Chong Institution: the second school to win the SQA, after Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) won last year. HCI has built a global partnership network in over 14 countries across 4 continents, and is well on track towards becoming a Global Academy.

• Ministry of Manpower: MOM is the first ministry in the history of the business excellence awards to win the SQA. MOM has been continually improving and improvising its manpower policies and programmes to support Singapore’s strategic push for sustainable and inclusive growth.

People Excellence Award Winner:

• National Library Board: The winner of the niche award for People Excellence goes to the National Library Board (NLB). which has effectively adopted human resource strategies to manage its transformation from a custodian of printed materials to a gateway of knowledge. NLB was awarded the SQA in 2004 and the Service Excellence Award in 2009. In its pursuit of organisational excellence, NLB continues to make continuous improvements area by area.

For the full statement by Mr Freddy Soon, Chairman, Singapore Quality Award Management Committee at the Business Excellence Awards 2010 Media Briefing click here