A comparative assessment of some major quality awards

Searching for quantitative tools to monitor the attainment of TQM objectives, reviews the Japanese, European and American quality awards and discusses their significance to business. The procedures, assessment criteria and benefits of the Deming Application Prize (DP), European Quality Award (EQA) and Malcolm Baldrige Quality Awards (MB) are examined in some detail and compared against each other. It has been found that the DP focuses on the dissemination of company wide quality control, continuous improvement and relations with suppliers. Its most important aspect is the thorough application of statistical QC techniques. The MB accepts that quality is customer‐driven and therefore focuses on customer satisfaction, benchmarking, competitive comparisons with the industry average, the industry leader, and the principal competitors in the company’s key markets. The EQA focuses on the relations with the community, and customers’ and employees’ satisfaction. Finally, another major difference between the DP and the other two is that certain examination criteria such as human resource management, customer satisfaction, impact on society, and operational results are not included in the former.