INTRODUCTION:

Businesses are impacted by multiple forces and are under an extraordinary pressure to perform. There are so many challenges faced by the organizations like dealing with the global competition, coping with rapid technological innovations, managing ever changing working processes and adjusting to frequent movement in the economic, social and customer environments. Initially the ultimate goal of all the organizations was only to maximize their profits but now there is an increased need for Creativity and Innovation, Sustainability, Inclusiveness, Corporate Governance etc.

Organization’s focus has moved on to enhancing quality and achieving excellence in all the aspects of a business. These practices lead to reduced costs, increased efficiency, higher customer satisfaction and ultimately higher profits.

Business Excellence refers to having “excellence” in all its aspects like strategies, business practices, and stakeholder-related practices. Business Performance Excellence is achieved when an organization generates the maximum level of profitability possible given the human, financial, capital, and other resources it possess (Luftig, 2005). 'Excellence' refers to the exceptional practices in managing the organisation and achieving results based on fundamental quality concepts. The Excellence Organisations can be measured by their ability to achieve and sustain outstanding results for their stakeholders.

Business excellence models guide organizations to achieve sustainable world-class business results, and are based on business principles that have been proven to work.

The first business excellence models were developed in the mid-1980s to promote the concept of quality in the West, to compete with the advancements in quality and competitiveness in Japan. Eventually, the term “Business Excellence” has replaced the terms “Quality” and “TQM”. Today, many countries view business excellence models as a key mechanism for improving their performance and national competitiveness.

LITERATURE REVIEW:

EFQM (the European Foundation for Quality Management) is a not-for-profit membership foundation in Brussels which was established in 1989. Its main aim is to increase the competitiveness of the European economy. Currently the objectives of EFQM are to provide networking, education, and awards, using a framework called the EFQM Excellence Model. The model is extensively used by over 30000 organisations across Europe.

The EFQM excellence model is a tool to help the organizations in establishing appropriate management systems. By using the EFQM model framework, organisations can determine their current "level of excellence" and where they need to improve their efforts. This enhances their quality efforts. Organizations must ensure that business decisions are aligned with their objectives and incorporate the needs of all its stakeholders. The model has two aspects: can be used for attaining a complete view of the organizational performance and to understand the cause and effect relationships between what organisations do and the results that they achieve.

The Excellence Model is based on all aspects of managing the business viz., People, Processes and Performance and Partnerships. and provides an integrated management framework for self assessment for the top management. The Excellence Model is based on universally accepted standardsand practices found in the European Quality Award, the US Malcolm Baldrige National QualityAward, Japan Quality Award and Australian Quality Award.

The EFQM business excellence model consists of three components:

1. Eight core values or key management principles for driving sustainable success

i. Adding value for customers

ii. Creating a sustainable future

iii. Developing organisational capability

iv. Harnessing creativity and innovation

v. Leading with vision, inspiration and integrity

vi. Managing with agility

vii. Succeeding through the talent of people

viii. Sustaining outstanding results

2. Nine criteria, separated into five "enablers" (leadership, people, strategy, partnerships and resources, and processes, products and services) and four "results" (people, customer, society, and business results)

3. RADAR logic, continuous improvement cycle used by EFQM. It was originally derived from the PDCA cycle.

i. Determine the Results aimed at as part of the strategy

ii. Plan and develop a set of Approaches to deliver the required results now and in the future

iii. Deploy the approaches in a systematic way to ensure implementation

iv. Assess and Refine the deployed approaches based on monitoring and analysis of the results achieved and ongoing learning

Organizations which successfully implement the Model participate in the Awards. The purpose of the EFQM Excellence Award Programme is to recognize Role Model organisations in Europe and beyond, whether private, public or non-for-profit. These are excellent organisations with an indisputable track record of success in turning strategy into action and continuously improving their performance.

The Assessment is done by a team of highly qualified and trained business professionals comprising an international team of 5 to 7 managers. It is done by using International benchmarks and it is a rigorous and transparent procedure, creating opportunities to benchmark against other organizations. They spend one week on site and an average of 500 hours in total per applicant. The management systems are reviwed, individual interviews as well as groups are conducted to analyse how effective the organisation is against the EFQM Excellence Model. The feedback report is prepared by the assessors. The report provides a wealth of value adding input to help the organisation improve at a strategic level. Iindependent jury will decide the level of recognition for each Nominee.

Based on assessment against the EFQM Excellence Model, EFQM gives out ‘The EFQM Excellence Award’ annually. This is to recognize the organizations that have achieved an outstanding level of sustainable excellence.

In India since 1994, The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Export Import Bank of India promotes excellence among Indian Industry through the CII-EXIM Bank Award for Business Excellence which is based on the EFQM Excellence Model.

CII was founded in 1895, it is a non-government, not-for-profit, industry-led and industry-managed organization having around 8000 members, from the private and public sectors, including SMEs and MNCs, and an membership of about 200,000 enterprises from 240 national and regional sectoral industry bodies. It works towards creating and sustaining a conducive environment for the development of India by partnering with industry, Government, and civil society, through advisory and consultative processes.

Many of the top-level companies in India participate in the award programme and gain the following benefits:

· Get an external perspective on the current status about the Organisation’s performance and practices

· Can Measure the progress on the journey of excellence

· Can Compare themselves with best-in-class Organisations

This analysis and introspection will further motivate the organizations to improve their practices and policies.

The Excellence Model is a practical, non-prescriptive framework that enables organizations to:

· Assess their position on the path to excellence; to understand the key strengths and potential gaps in relation to their stated Vision and Mission.

· Provide a common vocabulary and way of thinking about the organization

· Effective communication of ideas, both within and outside the organization.

· Integrate existing and planned initiatives, removing duplication and identifying gaps,

· Provide a basis structure for the organization’s management system.

Thus the Excellence Model provides a holistic view of the organization and it can be used to determine how these different methods fit together to complement each other.

OBJECTIVES:

The objectives of the research are:

1. To study the best practices adopted by the winners of EFQM Global Excellence Award, 2018 for achieving business excellence

2. To analyze the best practices to find out the parameters resulting in the achievement of business excellence

METHODOLOGY:

The research is exploratory in nature based on use of secondary resources for data collection. EFQM (the European Foundation for Quality Management), is a pioneer in developing The Excellence Model based on universally accepted standards. Organizations who wants to be recognised as a global role-model for excellenceparticipate in EFQM Global Excellence Award Programme.

The research is based on the study and analyses of the best practices adopted by the five winners of EFQM Global Excellence Award, 2018 for achieving business excellence. The companies studied are Infineon Technologies Austria AG, Dubai Police, Tarsus Belediyesi (Municipality), Mini Assembly, Plant Oxford and Yangtze optical fibre and cable joint stock limited company (YOFC).

The secondary data was collected from various articles, websites of these organization, EFQM website, books and journals.

The best practices adopted by these organizations were studied separately for each of the organizations and a comparative analysis was done to identify the overall strategies adopted by these organizations for excelling in their domain.

The results of the research will highlight the aspects which are most important for enterprises to excel and improve their quality. Indian managers can take cues from the research to analyze the shortfalls of their organizations and identify the areas for improvement. The findings can also be utilized by academicians, organizational performance coaches, learning organizations etc.

1. Infineon Technologies, Austria AG (IFAT):

It is a subsidiary of Infineon Technologies AG which is a world leader in providing semiconductor solutions that makes life easier, safer and greener. It pools competencies for research and development, production and global business responsibility. Infineon has been one of the most research-focused companies in Austria and a pioneer for digitalization for many years. They received Austrian State Prize for company quality in 2012.

Its key strengths are inmaximizing value for the Group by continuously increasing its profits, expanding market position and ensuring long-term growth through innovation and competitive production. It consistently applies Infineon’s “Road to Excellence” which combines the following four key elements for accomplishing its mission:

· High Performance Behaviour Model

· High Performance Company Monitor

· Product to System strategy

· Next Level Initiatives for improvement

Business Excellence Strategies adopted:

1 Infrastructure: it has a partial Industry 4.0 environment which helps them to develop its future

2 Strategy Focus: The current IFAT Strategy is 2025 “SMART Growth”. It focuses on improving global competitiveness and optimizing profits via excellent entrepreneurial achievements and innovations.

3 Leadership: The IFAT Leadership Circle creates a culture of transparency and trust.

· Leaders act as role models by displaying the Leadership Principles and High Performance Behavioural Model.

· Leadership Principles are made alive in daily work by using a dedicated smartphone app

· The importance of empowering people is well understood

· There is a strong feedback and idea generation culture among leaders and they strive for the best competence and diversity in teams.

4. Customer: to ensurea valueadd to the customers

· There is an extensive application of domain knowledge to createvalue propositions for best serving the customer needs.

· Good customer satisfaction results implydeep understanding of customers system.

5. Employees: ‘Great Place to Work’ results show that people are highly enthusiastic, motivated and proactive with a clear focus on doing their best for the future of IFAT and have a clear pride in working for IFAT. Able to attract and develop best talent pool.

6. Innovation: comprehensive and finely coordinated innovation process has been adopted to serve global customer demands.

2. Dubai Police:

The Dubai Police (DP) force was founded on the 1^stof June 1956. Now it has a force of 24,000 members, covering an area of 4,114 square kilometres. Dubai Police's vision is "Police Pioneering for a safe city". Its Identity "Smart Secure Together” reflects the core beliefsof safety, technology, openness and tolerance. Dubai is a top tourism and business destination worldwide. To keep Dubai attractive, it must be asafe and secure city. This calls for a need of an aligned police strategy.

Business Excellence Strategies adopted:

1. Improved Perception: Dubai Police has changed the way the public perceive Policing and Police Services by harnessing creativity and innovation:

· DP ranked first in reducing violent crime in the Global Competitiveness report.

· It achieved 95% as a perception of feeling safe and secure among members of the public while walking alone at night across the city or their neighborhood as per Gallup 2017. Dubai public areas, road traffic, neighborhoods, and industrial areas, are controlled and characterized as extremely safe

· DP achieved 100% in the safety and security perception among members of the public.

· Dubai Airport ranked first worldwide in airport security.

· Reduced the number of fatalities on road to 2.5 per 100,000 population for 2017.

· Ranking of UAE in the top 5 countries for reliability of Police services as per the Global competitiveness report

2. Innovation Labs: Since 2015, Dubai Police organizes yearly strategic innovation labs with all the stakeholders during which they brainstorm how they can meet the challenges and drive strategy achievements.

3. Customer orientation, culture of innovation and adoption of technological advancements has resulted in enhancement of effectiveness, efficiency, and beneficiaries' satisfaction.

4. Social Responsibility: Dubai police focuses on its people with a social responsibility, especially towards people with high determination and women (with women constituting 10% of the total workforce in Dubai Police in 2017).

5. Development of communication channels: to reach all community categories such as police community councils, women council and youth council.

6. Change Management: DP has a well-established change management approach that helps in initiating actions with agility.

7. Joint Councils: DP has established joint Councils with key partners specifically to share information and receive feedback and inputs that have impact on the core business and service delivery.

8. Live Data: DP relies on live and accurate data on all aspects to manage the core business and achieve best results.

9. Smart Police Station: The design and building of the first Smart Police Station worldwide provides seamless services without any face-to-face interaction. DP has already designed a Walk-In and Drive through Smart Police Stations which will change the shape of the future police station.

10 Dubai police developed the general department of the forensic evidence to include a modern criminal laboratory, which is the first of its kind in the region and the Middle East.

11 Implementation of Artificial intelligence: in the core business to predict the hot spots areas, which in turn helped in reducing the violent crimes from 58.6 per 100,000 population during 2013 to 38 per 100,000 population in 2017.

12. Implementing the latest technologies and robots: DP aims to reduce the average Police response time to various emergencies to 4 minutes in 2021.

13. Seven Stars Concept: Dubai Police is aiming to change the future client interactions through implementing the seven stars concept in the police stations and transform all the transactions offered to clients to 100 % digital services.

3. Tarsus Municipality:

Tarsus is a historic city in south-central Turkey, 20 km inland from the Mediterranean. It is part of the Adana-Mersin Metropolitan Area, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in Turkey with a population of 3 million people. The services provided by the municipality are development and urban planning, geographic and urban information systems, environment and health, cleaning, municipal police, housing, culture and art, tourism and promotion, social services and assistance and support for the development of economy and trade.

They achieved "Committed to Excellence" in 2009, "Recognised for Excellence" with 4 star in 2010, "Turkish Quality Prize" in 2012, "Turkish Quality Award" in 2013 and "Turkish Award of Sustainability for Excellence" in 2017.Their main idea is to be a productive municipality by using the resources effectively.

Business Excellence Strategies Adopted:

1. teams and individuals works on improving their services for the benefit of customers and other stakeholders through solving their problems. target is providing the highest quality service to citizens who are our main stakeholders and responding to their expectations quickly all the time

2. Leaders in Tarsus Municipality have created a culture of involvement and empowerment which is strongly recognised by employees throughout the organisation.

3. Vision, Mission and strategy are understood by everyone, aligning the organisation towards a joint goal.

4. Leaders are role models for putting their customers in the focus of their activities and for striving to improve not only the performance of their organisation, but even more to provide the citizens of Tarsus with the best service they can offer. The Mayor, particularly, acts as a role model in this respect.

5. Adopted a culture of continuous improvement that is driven by leaders - including the mayor - and is taken forward by staff at every level of the organisation.

5. Tarsus Municipality is clearly very focussed on the experience of their customers.

6. Tarsus leaders come together with regular meetings with many stakeholders and develop services together. As an example of this meeting, bi-monthly meetings with Headmen with NGOs every Wednesday and weekly meeting with management team.

7. Tarsus leaders have a transparent and accountable management approach- Municipal Assembly meetings are broadcast live, daily income is published on the web page and information is shared with council members via tablets which are given by the municipality.

8. For the planning of services to be made to the neighbourhoods, a meeting is held under the leadership of the Headmen and services are planned by taking the requests of the citizens.

9. With the "PegaTarsus" leadership program developed by the Municipality of Tarsus, all leaders evaluate themselves and are evaluated by subordinates and top employees with a 180 degree evaluation.

4. Mini Assembly, Plant Oxford:

MINI Plant Oxford is part of the BMW Group. The first ‘classic’ Minis were produced there in 1959. Today, three plants play a role in MINI production. Plant Hams Hall, which manufactures engines; Plant Swindon, which produces sub-assemblies and body pressings; and Plant Oxford, where the car’s body is built, painted and assembled. MINI Plant Oxford builds around 1,000 cars each day – one every 67 seconds. It is one of the most efficient and flexible plants in the BMW production network.

The new electric MINI is the first full electric car in BMW which will be built in a mixed line with normal combustion engines. This shows the flexibility and ability to react to challenges within our assembly.

1. Their assembly hall has a positive external image and they proactively engage with a wide-range of external stakeholders to demonstrate what they do.

2. Their guided tours provide assembly with a great opportunity to improve upon this image, allowing thousands of visitors each year to witness the birth of MINI.

3. Increase in passion of the associates on the shop floor. They are much more engaged now as a result of the actions we have introduced. With this engagement we’ve overcome the biggest challenge of sustainability after the changes.

4. leaders inspire their people and act as role models. Shop floor time for their leaders is an integral part of the overall strategy.

5. The ‘Leadership Development Programme’ supports the consistency of behaviours. Leaders are strongly committed to the strategy of the MINI Plant and assembly hall, and they live it through their actions.

6. Leaders ensure this by listening and embracing ideas from their people and ensuring follow through on them.

7. Engagement of our associates is critical, these are the ones building the car, keeping the line running and through constant engagement we get the best out of them.

5. Yangtze Optical Fibre and Cable Joint Stock Limited Company (YOFC):

is mainly producing and selling different types and standards of optical fibre preform, optical fibre and optical cable that are widely used in telecommunication industry, customized specialty fibre and cable, RF coaxial cable and accessories. YOFC also provides the integrated system, project design and services. In addition, YOFC is equipped with a full series of fibre and cable and solutions, providing a variety of different products and solutions for world’s telecom industry and other industries (e.g. Publicity, Transportation, Oil and Chemistry and Medication) and offering its products and services to over 60 countries and regions around the world.

The continuous improvement of technological innovation capability has made YOFC always in the forefront of the industry. The progress of YOFC has also driven the overall technological progress and industrial development.

Adhering to the mission of ‘Smart Link Better Life’, YOFC devotes itself to becoming the leader in information transmission and smart links through its core value ‘Client Focus Accountability Innovation Stakeholder Benefits’, and places its layout aggressively in 5 domains: preform, fibre and cable connotative growth, technological innovation and intelligent manufacturing, international region expansion, relative diversification and capital management.

1. YOFC has created six “globally uniqueness” in the industry:

· The longest industrial chain,

· The mastery of three optical fibre preform making processes,

· The independent R and D of whole equipments,

· The largest size of preform products,

· The fastest drawing speed of optical fibre

· The only state key laboratory in the industry.

2. YOFC has been committed to technological innovation for 30 years, mastered the core technologies and key technologies of this industry, built the core competitiveness of YOFC, set avery good example of technological innovation in the industry, and played a good demonstration role.

3. In terms of standard setting, many experts of YOFC work in authority standard organizations on behalf of China. Up to the end of 2017, the company has presided over or participated in the drafting of 146 standards, including 15 international standards and 80 domestic and industry standards, and published about 132 SCI/EI papers. Total 437 proprietary technologies had been formed, with 350 domestically licensed patents (including 160 invention patents) and 50 foreign authorized patents.

In 2005, "PCVD process making Non-zero Dispersion Displacement Fibre and Large-scale Production Technology Research" won the second prize of National Prize for Progress in Science and Technology. In 2017, "New Fibre Equipment Technology and Industrialization" won the second prize of National Prize for Progress in Science and Technology once again. YOFC is the only one in Chinese optical fibre and cable industry to get this highest level technological award twice.

4. High innovation and the right technology choices (Global No.1 market share) under the guidance of good strategy direction and visionary leadership;

5. Strong customer intimacy resulting in a high reputation;

6. Sound financial organization taking the majority of market share worldwide within three decades;

7. YOFC actively shapes industry standards;

8. Highly attractive organization with committed people to shape the future;

9. Good corporate citizen in respective communities

FINDINGS OF THE STUDY:

The research has analyzed the key traits required in an organization to achieve excellence,.These are as follows:

· Have key customer insights

· Focus on business strategies for creating customer value

· Quality commitment

· Upgrading knowledge and processes

· Management by facts and feedback.

· Business strategies focus on customer value: Manylarge companies remain stuck in their operatingmodels and real change comes only with the newgeneration of entrepreneurs.

· Quality commitment at all levels: Quality is mainly a matter of practice and requires implementation of proper principles.

· Constantly updating products and processes: Customer feedback can be a powerful input to spot areaswhere the company needs to work.

· Management by facts and feedback: large companies must conduct periodicsatisfaction surveys among customers, channel partners, and employees. These serve as a useful feedback mechanism for course correction.

CONCLUSION:

In the Indian scenario, it is mainly the MNCs driven by their global processes that are driving business excellence. The same culture needs to be cultivated by the Indian companies be they large or medium ones. They need to focus on innovation and responsiveness to change, quality and process improvement, adoption of sound values, and management by fact and feedback. In the global scenario, this may well turn out to be the difference between survival and demise.

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY:

The methodology used is based on analysis of the best practices on organizations adopted for achieving business excellence. The study is not based on any statistical tools. The findings of the research may not be universally applicable to all the organizations. The organizations will need to identify their weak areas and adopt a suitable business excellence strategy for achieving success. The study is subjective to the understanding of the researcher and limited in scope.

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Received on 07.01.2019 Modified on 16.02.2019

Res. J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 2019; 10(2):524-530.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5828.2019.00086.X

S. No.	Organization name	Country	Number of employees	Sector
1	Infineon Technologies, Austria AG (IFAT)	Austria	3785	Technology
2	Dubai Police	United Arab Emirates	24000	Public Sector
3	Tarsus Municipality	Turkey	840	Government/ Local Authority
4	Mini Assembly, Plant Oxford	United Kingdom	2000	Automotive
5	Yangtze Optical Fibre and Cable Joint Stock Limited Company (YOFC)	China	2400	Manufacturing