Participants of the national workshop in Taipei

The APO is undertaking research among its member countries to determine the value and impact of business excellence frameworks/quality award frameworks. The survey began in June 2009 led by Chief Expert Dr. Robin Stephen Mann, Director of the Centre for Operational Excellence Research of Massey University, New Zealand. This regional initiative is the second collaboration involving quality award systems in the Republic of China, India, Japan, Singapore, and Thailand, which form the APO’s Regional Platform for Advancing Business Excellence in Member Countries established in 2008. The collaboration entails three phases: development of the research scope and coverage in the first phase; conducting national workshops (one in each of the four countries with three in Japan) in the second phase; and publication of the research results in the final phase.

Participants and experts of the national workshop in Japan

Recently, in phase 2, seven national workshops have been held. More than 120 practitioners from some 50 local and global enterprises attended the one-day workshops in Mumbai, Singapore, Bangkok, Taipei, and Tokyo. In addition, an online survey in English, Chinese, Japanese, and Thai will encourage more enterprises to participate in this survey. The targeted enterprises are profit-driven businesses that are either award winners or current practitioners of the business excellent framework in APO member countries.

This is the APO Secretariat’s first direct engagement with the business community in relation to business excellence initiatives. Due to the positive response from participating countries during the workshops, the results will be reported and discussed in the upcoming APO Conference on Quality Award Systems in Bangkok, 15–18 December. The findings of this survey will be used to plan projects to promote business excellence framework adoption and will form the basis for a future APO publication. Chief Expert Dr. Mann, who is also the current chairman of the Global Benchmarking Network, remarked that is the first such survey undertaken. It will indicate how the business excellence framework has made a difference in business performance for successful adopters and provide insights from CEOs and senior business leaders on how to remain sustainably competitive in the current economic climate.