The EOQ actual role in Europe and globalizing world Presented by: Prof. Y. Gusakov President of EOQ 1
Dear Ministress of Education, Youth and Sport, Dear Minister of Industry and Trade, Dear participants of 51 st EOQ Annual Congress, Dear honorable guests of the Congress, first of all I want to say that we are very glad to see you here in beautiful Prague which is this week rightfully may be called capital of World Quality movement. In Prague during these days we really have an opportunity of welcoming the representatives of all continents, world known quality scientists, quality managers, quality auditors and quality professionals. My congratulations to quality leaders of industries, Borel medal laureates and EOQ honourable members. Your participation in this Congress is really very important for us. My special welcome to those who work in National Organizations for quality. You are real assets of EOQ. I am sure the Congress will be a success and I wish to all present in this beautiful Convention Centre useful business meetings and pleasant time in Prague. The world s leading political analysts and economists predict that two global geopolitical factors will prevail in the world in the first twenty years of this century: 1) Demographic factor. The planet s population will grow to estimated 8 billion by 2025, this with large possibility will result in ecological and social crisises. 2) Emergence and development of fundamentally new political and economic world space as a result of two revolutions technological and economic. Technological revolution is creation and intensive development of relatively inexpensive, and thus accessible to the public, telecommunication facilities and computer technologies. Economic revolution is related to almost complete liquidation of two opposite political and economic systems and, as a consequence, the current total, pandemic orientation of both the West and, now the East to market economy. World known scientists believe that these revolutions are creating new unprecedented opportunities for business development. The major worldwide problems caused by technological and economic revolutions may be classified as 2 main categories: 1) how can we divide the planet s limited living space and resources 2) how can we preserve, replenish, and ensure accessibility to the general values of mankind, as well as to humanitarian values Under these conditions, the role of the business community in general and of each individual enterprise, firm, or company becomes even more important. The material resources held by them coupled with the new business opportunities opening up for them as a result of the technological and economic revolution make them one of the 2
most important parties concerned. Understanding by business leaders of their key importance and leading role in resolving of the above mentioned problems faced by the world in the early 21 st century resulted in development of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainable Development (SD) concepts. The companies which have voluntarily accepted CSR and SD ideology are now developing and implementing various plans and programs of actions to preserve and restore the ecological and social status of the territories of their location as an integral part of their corporate strategies. In this context the CSR implementation enables an individual company to take a fundamentally new stand in the regional, national, and global community. In terms of quality, the CSR and SD implementation makes it possible to make a statement that two commonly known levels of quality in relation to an individual company - the quality of products (services) and the quality of management must be supplemented with a third level, i.e. the quality of the society. Through advances in information and communications technology as a result of technological revolution the world is virtually becoming a smaller place. It is no longer enough for organizations to just make profits for their shareholders and be obedient to the low. They are increasingly accountable to more environmentally and socially aware shareholders, to civil society in general, to employees, to customers and to variety of other stakeholders. The creation and sustainable development of organization is now central to our economic and social lives. As proposed by ISO sustainability is the result of continued satisfaction of the organization s stakeholders; the stakeholders are those entities (organizations, individuals, institutions) which contribute to the functioning and value creation of the organization and without whom the organization s aims could not be achieved. What is EOQ present role in todays dynamic world, what can our organization do for companies committed to implement the principles of CSR and sustainable development? How to support them to increase their competitiveness? First of all we need to start from ourselves. In December 2006 EOQ sent a letter to Mr. Kofi Annan who was United Nations Secretary General that time. In this letter we informed UN that EOQ supports ten principles of the Global Compact in respect of human rights, labour rights, the protection of environment etc. We expressed our intent to support and advance those principles. We commit ourselves to making the Global Compact and its principles a part of the strategy, culture and day-to-day 3
activities of our organization and to make clear and systematic statements of this commitment. We are and we will be in future an organization for quality, we stick to quality and are committed to support companies in their struggle for competitiveness, using primarily quality methods and tools. Who is expected to implement CSR principles and models in the companies? The answer is clear. Quality stuff of the company. Who plays one of the key roles in increasing the competitiveness of company products: again this is quality people. At present ISO is developing new draft of ISO 9004, focused on sustainability matters. Who is going to implement it? The same answer: quality people. So the role of EOQ is also very clear. Among others, the key elements are: - we should unite quality people of Europe, - we should give fast and easy access to the information on quality, - we have to provide quality community with most advantageous methods, it means that EOQ must increase education and training opportunities for them In this respect I am glad to say that there are some good news for quality people, for quality society of Europe. In December 2006 EOQ has revised its basic documents regarding membership in our organization. Starting with 2007 we have several new categories of membership: affiliate members business partners and some others From now on we invite to EOQ membership not for profit organizations and profit making companies, that means that we are open to any organization in Europe and outside Europe who wants to increase its competitiveness by active cooperation with EOQ. Even during a short period after changing of EOQ Statute we witness the great interest of business community to our new membership. That leads EOQ to the idea of starting a new project which is called Business Leaders Club. The members of this club at present are German, French, Turkish and some other European countries leading companies who regularly meet under EOQ umbrella and benchmark how quality can increase their competitiveness. 4
Another project which we started recently is called EVROS European system on registration of information on quality. This project is aimed at setting up and developing of Europe wide database of information on quality. Our aim is collecting, analyzing and then providing European business community with best practices in quality SCR, sustainable development and competitiveness. So far EOQ appointed 13 National nominated bodies in different European countries whom any company that wants to share with others its achievements in quality matters can address. These nominated bodies will provide fast and efficient access to the database managed by professional database operator. Information on quality will be registered and the company which provided this information will get certificate of registration. Along with development of database we plan to develop a new brand: EOQ registered company. The work on this project started in 2007 but we already have quite positive response from industries of different countries. EOQ is traditionally strong in training quality personnel and at present we feel a great interest to our training not only from European countries but also world wide. That was one of the reasons for EOQ to start intensive cooperation with International Personnel Certification Association (IPC) where EOQ recently was granted a position of honourable partner. Among many courses conducted by EOQ members at present you will find CRS course and sustainabality course. I think that a new very important area of EOQ activities will be cooperation with International and European standardization organizations Personally having standardization background I believe in standards. I believe that high quality international standard normally being a relatively short document can in concentrated form present a summary of practical experience and knowledge of thousands of engineers and scientists, can serve as a guideline for industries, can create a community of professionals as it happened, for example, when ISO 9000 series standards were published and implemented worldwide. Standards development process needs quality people input, without them there is no proper fit back, there is no professional response on standards implementation, on what amendments should be introduced. 5
Standards people also need scientific values of quality to be used in standards and that is why P-D-C-A cycle is now used as one of the key principles for new drafts of ISO standards. No need to prove that both standards of quality communities are committed to cooperate and the role of international organizations is to find and to propose the best, the most effective methods of this cooperation. We plan actively participate in development of new ISO 9000 standards and in particular in ISO 9004 managing for sustainability a quality management approach. I use this opportunity to welcome our colleagues from International Standardization Organization present at our Congress. I also want to welcome the leaders of EOQ World partners, - American Society for Quality, Asia Network of Quality, International Academy of Quality, JUSE Japan and others. Several years ago EOQ in cooperation with above mentioned organizations initiated creation of World Alliance for Quality (WAQ). Why do we feel that this Alliance is so important? It is obvious that Quality goes now beyond the borders, major part of quality issues should be addressed globaly. In WAQ meeting in Singapore in September 2006 we have identified 3 key issues which WAQ will deal with. They are: - Help quality organizations of countries to find their place in the world Quality community - Improve the quality of life of world citizens - Maintain and improve the quality of products and services We hope and we are committed to create WAQ as a forum for world quality community and good indication that we are moving in the right way is the fact that recently 2 new world partners expressed their wish to join us this is Asia Pacific Quality Organization and Middle East Quality Association. We are planning to organize our work in 2 ways: - Launch a specific projects, for example to develop quality of life index - Inform on existing experiences which can be used by others The alliance will be guided by the following principles: 1. Action oriented 2. Informal organization 3. Attraction instead of constraint. 6
Every 3 years WAQ will organize World Quality Congress, the last one was held in Tokyo in 2005, the next will be in Houston, USA in 2008. The main strategic idea of these events is to get quality people of the world together. Quality community and quality people - this is the largest asset of EOQ. For all 50 years of its history EOQ did its best to unite quality people. Thousands of quality people have been trained with a help of EOQ training methodology, generations of quality people attended our events like the one we are having today. EOQ works for quality people and will do it in future. Recently we adjusted our vision to the requirements of globalizing world. EOQ vision is that our organization should be a worldwide leader of quality, innovation and care. Our mission is to improve the heath of Europe through promotion of quality in its broadest sense. We are organization for Quality, we will promote it in future with the help of all of you, our colleagues and friends, quality people of Europe. Thank you for attention. 7