European Quality Award Model- (CII-EXIM Award in India ) – A Brief Introduction

EQA or the European Quality Award is administered by European Foundation for Quality Management,an autonomous and non-profit organization in Europe. The European Quality award was instituted after the Malcolm Baldrige National Award of USA and hence it is claimed that the creators of the model could enhance the criteria and the contents in some of the aspects.

In India, This award is better known as CII-Exim award and is managed by CII TQM Division (CII Institute of Quality ) with Head office at Bengaluru.

Many things are common between Malcolm Baldrige award and the CII award. Both are having the scores from 0-1000. Roughly the score is split 50% for enablers or processes and 50% for results. Many criteria are similar like Leadership, strategic planning etc.

The criteria in CII EXIM award model are

1. Leadership2. Policy and strategy3. People4. Partnerships and Resources5. Processes6. Customer results7. People results8. Society results9. Key Performance results

The Model has a lot of emphasis on resources as a complete section is devoted to managing resources. Environment protection is also figuring as a requirement in leadership category thus bringing out the concern for Europe for environment. The linkage between strategy and the process framework is a requirement in the model and so a systematic deployment of strategy is anticipated.

On results, the interesting feature of EFQM –CII model is that the emphasis is on the perceptions of stakeholders and 75% of the marks are given for customer or employee perceptions. Only 25 % of the marks is given for the internal data compiled by the company. This is to drive home the point that results should be seen as positive by the respective stakeholders using their own yardsticks. The results required are more detailed in the case of CII model than Baldrige.

CII model scores follow a RADAR principle ie Results Approach Deployment Assessment and Review. This is supposed to be indicative of the PDCA (Plan-DO –Check-Act) cycle with one variation that we start with the results targeted. Each sub criterion is supposed to be evaluated for

1. Approach – whether the approach is sound , and integrated with the policy and strategy.

2. Deployment –whether the approach is implemented in a structured way3. Assessment and Review- whether the measurement is in place for effectiveness of

approach and deployment and whether learning is internalized to improve the approach.

The scoring for results category are based on whether the results have got trends and whether they are exceeding the targets set by the organization. They should also be positive in comparisons with others to get high scores. CII model also needs the organization to determine the processes responsible for the favourable trends. The scoring is also more detailed with increments of 5% in every aspect (for example in Approach ,Deployment , assessment and review)

Though European model came later then Baldrige it has acquired very good popularity in India and in other developing countries. It is private unlike Baldrige model which is a Government property. This is the reason why limited organizations only adopt this model and in case CII wants to make it more popular, it may need to make it more affordable to all companies.

Some of the winners of this award are

1. Tata Steel Limited2. Hewlett Packard India Limited 3. Maruti Udyog Limited4. Infosys Technologies Limited5. Tata Motors Limited (CVBU)6. BHEL Hardwar Unit

Some organizations have adopted CII model as the basic frame work and have developed their own award models. Ravi Kirloskar Quality Prize in the Kirloskar Group is an example of how CII (European) model has inspired orgainsations to come up with their own models and awards.

It is often felt that the quality of the award is not in its criteria but in the quality of assessors. The assessors interpret the criteria for us and it becomes imperative we have very capable people on board. It is difficult to find talented people who have the right attitude and with increasing pressure of work, many executives shy away from the arduous task of doing the assessment. The organizations who apply for the award need to see the value in the feedback report which assessors give and this can happen only of the assessors have very good understanding of business and the model.

It looks like that the task of award administrators is now to concentrate more on the quality of assessors and less on the model as the model looks almost complete in its content and form. (Comments/criticisms can be mailed to cpc@tqmi.com. Views expressed are personal)