By PhilExport News and Features
20 May 2019
Published also in Business Mirror
THE Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) aims to conduct a learning session on Philippine Quality Award (PQA) program for local exporters that intends to help them achieve world-class performance.
Already, 81 organizations in the private and public sectors which excel in quality and productivity were conferred the PQA over the past 10 years.
“It is not an award for product or service quality, but for a quality management system that hinges on improvement in the delivery of products and/or services, and provides a way of satisfying and responding to customers’ needs and requirements,” said a briefing paper on PQA program released by the DTI-Competitiveness Bureau.
PQA provides an internationally comparable framework and criteria, patterned from the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program of the United States, for assessing organizational performance.
The highest level of national recognition for exemplary organizational performance, the program is a template for competitiveness based on the principles of Total Quality Management.
Competitive organizations are believed to possess 11 core values of the PQA program, including managing for innovation, focus on success, organizational learning and agility, management by fact, societal responsibility, ethics and transparency, delivering value and results, systems perspective, visionary leadership, customer-focused excellence and valuing people.
“Innovation and continuous improvement are different, but complementary, concepts. Successful organizations use both approaches to improve performance,” the briefing paper said.
It said they should also ensure their success “now and in the future” through understanding of the short- and longer-term factors that affect the organization and its market.
“Ensuring this ongoing success requires managing uncertainty in the environment, as well as balancing some stakeholders’ short-term demands with the organization’s and stakeholders’ needs to invest in long-term success,” it added.
These core values are embedded to the first six process criteria categories, which are leadership; strategy; customer; measurement, analysis and knowledge management; work force; and operations.
The highest level or the top award is the Philippine Quality Award for Performance Excellence.
“To win the top award, the organization must demonstrate the highest level of management excellence, deserving to be a national and global role model,” it said.
The PQA or recognition is given by no less than the President of the Philippines in appropriate ceremonies usually held at the Malacañang.