Assessing the Philips BEST model for business excellence and quality management

¶ … enterprise, balancing quality management initiatives and programs relative to business excellence frameworks is both a paradox and potential opportunity to better unify these two potentially conflicting strategic priorities. The levels of success enterprises have in balancing Total Quality Management (TQM) initiatives on the one hand and business excellence frameworks on the other is illustrated in the Philips BEST (Business Excellence through Speed and Teamwork) initiative (de Kort, 2004, pg. 377). Philips was able to successfully define the intersection of quality management with their TQM and Six Sigma initiatives while pursuing management of quality through their BEST framework (Adebanjo, 2001, pg. 39). How Philips was able to accomplish this and still innovate, compete and grow their customer base has valuable lessons for other companies as well. The intent of this analysis is to assess the Philips BEST model with specific reference to the importance of teamwork, transformational leadership and trust across their business units. These factors contributed to the success of the BEST model, also enabling the unique approach Philips took in integrating TQM techniques into their organization. The second objective of this analysis is to evaluate the Philips BEST Model relative to Adebanjo's proposition that "business excellence and quality can and need to complement each other to provide organizations with the operational and business success they aspire to and which is necessary for survival in today's market" (Adebanjo, 2001, 37). The third objective of this analysis is to evaluate how the Philips BEST tools and competencies can be applied to the pursuit of business excellence in an enterprise software company.

Assessing the Effectiveness of the Philips BEST Model

Philips Electronics is in a series of high technology businesses, each based on products and services with very rapid product development lifecycles where the management of quality is critical. In addition, the quality of management is just as critical to their organizational performance. Integrating management of quality including Total Quality Management (TQM) into their BEST Model took several iterations over a period of years (de Kort, 2004, pg. 378). All the effort led to one of the best-performing Business Excellence models in existence today. The BEST Model is comprised of the following components. First there is the Business Excellence (BE) aspects of the BEST Model which concentrates on the quality of management that Philips is relying on to drive its quality management initiatives deep into the culture of the company. Second, the Speed (S) aspect of the Business Excellence framework speaks to the need for a very high need for urgency and continual performance improvement. Eliminating the non-value added components of any management workflow is critical in this regard (de Kort, 2004,379). Philips relies on Business Process Reengineering (BPR) as a means to continually drive speed into their core process and strategy areas and support these areas of the BEST Model (de Kort, 2004, pp. 378).