During last’s week presentation of the MSA EN ISO 9001 certificate to the Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry, Parliamentary Secretary Chris Said announced that the Malta Standards Authority will soon be amalgamated with the new Malta Competition and Consumer Affairs Authority which has started work on the introduction in Malta of a national Quality Award.
The aim of this award is to encourage Maltese manufacturing and service organisations to strive for excellence and to give special recognition to those who are considered to be quality leaders in Malta. This award is intended to generate interest and the involvement of organisations in quality programmes and to drive our products and services to higher levels.
Quality is understood in its broadest sense including quality of product, quality of organisation and quality of management. It integrates the different aspects of a company, namely economic, social and societal. Different models have been developed to define such organisations. One can point out excellence models such as the European Foundation for Quality Management model, Malcolm Baldridge and Deming but also sustainable models and more recently corporate social responsibility models, all of which cover the different aspects of an organisation’s management.
The EFQM Excellence model has been chosen as the basis for the Malta Quality Award as it is today the most comprehensive one having integrated self-assessment and being a learning tool. This was the advice given to the Malta Standards Authority which commissioned Bertrand Jouslin de Noray from the European Organisation for Quality to carry out a feasibility study on the introduction of such an award in Malta.
The EFQM Excellence Model was introduced at the beginning of 1992 as the framework for assessing applications for The European Quality Award. It is the most widely used organisational framework in Europe and has become the basis for the majority of national and regional quality awards. An award needs to have a strong basis to be successful. The EFQM model has been developed by a strong team of the best experts on the subject in Europe and has been tested in many companies to check its efficiency.
The model is geared not only to organisations that are in a position to successfully compete for the award but also to those which, although not equipped to win the award, wish to take up the challenge of pursuing competitiveness and excellence. This means that an organisation can use the criteria of excellence as a scheme of reference to improve its management system, make a self-evaluation so as to improve, or as a guide to drawing up the report by which it can put itself forward as a candidate for the national award.
It makes use of a core model which is split into two aspects – results, which are measurable indicators of business success, and enablers, which are measurable indicators of practices inside the organisation that can lead to business success. Importantly, results are not measured simply on financial criteria (a theme shared with the balanced scorecard, another widely used organisational audit and development tool) but include things such as employee and customer satisfaction. The model has been implemented by over 30 000 organisations worldwide.
The Malta Quality Award, to be managed by the new Malta Competition and Consumer Affairs Authority will be a recognition of the management of an organisation and not a certificate of quality for the product or service. It will recognise management excellence geared to total quality and continual improvement. The introduction of the Malta Quality Award will be an opportunity for Malta to show the excellence of its companies to Europe as well as to learn from other outstanding European companies.
Mr Farrugia is chairman of the Malta Standards Authority.