kay ogunbowale wk5 hia

8/3/2019 Kay Ogunbowale WK5 HiA

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Kay Ogunbowale - Student ID: 15622462

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INTRODUCTION

Businesses operating in the 21st century are increasing faced with difficult

terrain with their customers playing critical roles in ensuring the survival

or extinction of the organisations. Pilbeam & Corbridge (2010) buttressed

the above point by explaining that increasing customers sophistication

and ability to get alternatives are some the key drivers for organisation

growth hence the focus on intangible values such as: Brand, reputation,

quality, efficient processes etc as pointed out by Oakland (2003). Hence

the focus on aligning the overall corporate strategy of the organisation

with the quality strategy to ensure that the organisation creates and

deliver quality products or services that would meet the needs of their

customers. Martins & Terblanche (2003) were of the opinion that an

organisation can stimulate growth and solid performance by focusing on

innovative concepts that would revolutionize their products or services.

Critical to an organisation implementing innovative concepts is the

adoption of Total Quality Management (TQM) methodologies that would

drive the organisations drive for growth or performance. This study would

consider the implementation of the BEST model in Philips Electronics and

application to Shell Nigeria while considering the business excellence and

quality preposition from Adebanjo.

BRIEF INTRODUCTION ABOUT PHILIPS ELECTRONICS


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Philips Electronics is one of the biggest electronic gadgets such as TVs,

lighting, washing machine, Steam irons etc. with about 240 production

facilities scattered and staff base of about 200+ scattered around the

world. The company was founded in 1891 by Gerard Philips in Eindhoven

and overall several decades of commitment to research and innovations

have seen them owning several patents and research that have enabled

the organisation to achieve phenomenal growth with a significant share of

the electronics market. The company is managed by the board of

management which sets the tone for the company by providing directions

and long-term strategy while the policies are implement by the Group

Management Committee made up by the operational managers,

chairman and some members of the board. The organisation in order to

remain competitive while improving their processes, products, systems

etc. embarked on business improvement project to implement TQM

methodology that would enable them to achieve world class. This

methodology is called Business Excellence through Speed and Teamwork

(BEST).

ASSESSMENT OF THE BEST MODEL

The core of this methodology is based on Business Excellence, Speed

and Teamwork which was implemented to complement the Philips

Quality Management system. The model helps an organisation in making

its customers as priority, develop employees, and maximize shareholders

value, integrated supply chain network with commitment to continuously

learning driven by systematic improvements and a highly developed team


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working that encourages seamless communication amongst all the

relevant stakeholders.

Therefore Philips Electronics implemented the BEST model through the

use of four cycle of Plan, Do, Check, Act in a continuous loop at both

operational and strategic level. This cycle ensures that the organisation

are able to implement their strategy, continuous improvement of the

operational processes, constant monitoring of processes and results while

acting to ensure that the opportunities identified are translated to

actions to maximize the gain.

The alignment between the improvement and business ensures that the

model and organisation enjoys sound business results. These are:

Balanced business scorecards (BBS)

Process survey tools (PST)

PBE assessments (PBE)

Headquarters audits (HQA)

The above tools are further complemented by Knowledge Management,

Professional and leadership competencies. All these combined enables

Philips Electronics to achieve world class and business excellence.

EVALUATION OF THE BEST MODEL AGAINST THE BUSINESS

EXCELLENCE AND QUALITY PREPOSITION

Adebanjo (2001) was of the opinion that corporate excellence has been

the front burner of most organisations in their quest to remain competitive


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and as a way of managing the businesses hence the development of

excellence model in order to ensure that the organisation survives any

economic situation. He is also of the opinion that business excellence and

quality should go hand in hand so that organisation could reap the

benefits accruable which is different from the school of thoughts that

believed that the Business Excellence and Quality should be separated.

Linking this to the BEST model, we can see that this model enables an

organisation to harmonize the quality system and Business Excellence to

achieve outstanding results.

APPLICATION OF THE BEST MODEL USING SHELL NIGERIA AS A

CASE STUDY

Using the Shell Nigeria especially the SAP BI team which is a sub-unit of

the Finance dept. responsible for System based improvement for the

organisation. This sub-unit is currently been managed by the SAP

Business Improvement Manager and he is responsible for setting

objectives that are in-line with the strategic objectives of the organisation.

Using the BEST model:

PLAN the sub-unit could benefit from planning its objectives and

properly communicate it to all the subordinates.

DO Implementation and translation of the strategic objectives into

operational goals that drive the adding of value to the entire organisation

while processes could be managed more efficiently


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CHECK Continuous monitoring of the plan to make adjustments where

necessary and to ensure that the unit stays on track

ACT implement the changes or improvement identified in the Check

process to ensure that the organisation realize the opportunities that are

identified.

CONCLUSIONS

The BEST model has the potential to move an organisation into world

class if properly implemented though care should be taken to get the

proper buy-in of all the relevant stakeholders else they risk wasting lots of

money, time and energy etc.

REFERENCES

Adebanjo, D. (2001) TQM and business excellence: is there really a

conflict?, Measuring Business Excellence, 5 (3), pp. 3740.

Martins, E.C. & Terblanche, F. (2003), "Building organisational culture that

stimulates creativity and innovation", European Journal of innovative

Management, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. pp. 64-74.

Oakland, J.S. (2003) TQM: text with cases, 3rd ED. Oxford: Butterworth-

Heinemann.

Other sources would be tapped from University of Liverpool online Library,

internet, etc.

kay ogunbowale wk5 hia

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