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The purpose of this paper is to review the Russian Federation Government Quality Award (RFGQA) over its 25-year existence.

This paper looks into the evolution, model and key provisions of RFGQA, based on the authors’ long-time experience as an Award assessor. Apart from that, methodologically, this study uses the desktop research method, comparative literature review.

The research results show that RFGQA over its 25 years has become the most popular approach to the development of organizational excellence for Russian enterprises and organizations, regardless of the sphere of activity.

This paper presents the core results of RFGQA’s 25-year existence. The comparison of the current Russian Quality Award model with the new European Foundation for Quality Management model is not analyzed.

This research paper extends current knowledge of national quality awards and presents an original set of information about RFGQA, its methodology and results.

For businesses a major drawback of self‐assessments based on quality award models is the amount of precious time and effort they require. Based on work with a major European service company, a ‘quick’ approach has been developed by Aarhus School of Business. In the second of two articles, Jens Dahlgaard and Jakob Eskildsen explain its new method for scoring business excellence and compare it with established approaches.

The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the development of a system for assessing and improving technology development and innovations. The system components comprise: a framework or model for assessing, measuring, diagnosing and improving innovation enablers and results; a simple methodology for data collection, data analysis and prioritizing improvement areas; and an index for measuring the performance level of innovation, learning and lean (ILL) and the potentials to increase that level. To improve innovation, which is the most complex challenge for today's organizations, there is a need for such a system.

The first two system components have been developed and tested during a period of ten to 15 years in several industrial companies as well as service organizations. The last component has recently been developed to satisfy a need of all types of organizations.

With the last development, the ILL index, the three components comprise a system for assessing and improving innovations. As with any other system, the system components are interrelated.

This paper presents a system for assessing and improving innovations. As with any other system the system‐components are interrelated. To improve innovation, which is the most complex challenge for today's organizations, there is a need for such a system. It is hoped that the suggested system will be used within all types of organizations and all types of innovations – products, processes and services.

The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss/reflect on some well‐known excellence frameworks or models in order to understand the development in the contents of excellence during the last 25 years and to understand the problems or limitations which such kind of models still may have.

The studies examine some leading excellence frameworks and models and discuss/identify their strengths as well as weaknesses. The chosen models and frameworks are Peters' and Waterman's eight excellence attributes (1982), Peter's and Austin's simplified excellence model (1985), lists of best practices (1998), Xerox excellence models (1990, 2002), the European excellence model (1992), Dahlgaard‐Park and Dahlgaard's 4P model (1999, 2004) and Toyota's 4P model.

Generally, excellence models and frameworks are inspired by the Japanese practices and they recognize the importance of the soft dimension of organizational realities. However, there are tendencies to interpret these models from reductionist and positivistic view and ignore the human aspect and the soft dimension when organizations try to implement the model in their struggle to achieve excellence. 4P model and the four aspects of organizational realities can reduce these negative tendencies.

The study documents how the selected leading models and frameworks about excellence have been developed and practiced during the last 25 years with identification of each frameworks background, strengths and limitations.

The purpose of the paper is to present and discuss the Kansei engineering (KE) methodology, and to reflect on the future development of KE. The paper presents a model of the KE methodology and illustrates how this model was applied on a simple example which all may understand – design of a new chocolate bar.

The research methodology is a combination of desk research (literature analysis), data collection, data analysis, reflections and model building.

The paper suggests a structural model as a possible expanded framework for future Kansei/affective engineering research studies. According to the model profound affection is a result of the following six enabler factors: sensing experience; emotional experiences (Kansei); behavioural experiences/action; social experiences/interactions and relations; spiritual experiences/moral, ethics; intellectual experiences/cognition.

The paper defines “Profound affection” as a very comprehensive state, which is a result of a combination of sensing, intellectual/cognitive, emotional, social, behavioural and spiritual experiences. “Profound affection” is not only a result of sensing or emotional experiences.

A sample of Italian manufacturing companies was selected in order to verify the abilities and effects (relationships) of the management factors human resources, leadership and strategic planning on company performance. The Partial Least Squares (PLS) estimation method was used for analyzing the data collected, where the relationships between the management factors and performance were formalized by a Structural Equation Model (SEM). The analysis of the survey data showed unexpected result regarding the non significant direct relationship between Leadership and Performance. The effect of Leadership is obtained by an indirect relationship through Human Resources. The combination of Leadership and Human Resources has hence been identified as the management factors which have the highest impact on the performance of Italian industrial companies. Another interesting and unexpected result was that there was no significant impact of Strategic Planning on Performance. It seems that the leaders of Italian industrial companies have not understood that good strategic planning is a necessary condition for achieving excellence. So another improvement area is in fact Strategic Planning. This area should have the highest priority of any top management team and the focus should include how to establish a strong relationship between strategic planning and performance. No correlation between strategic planning and performance is a strong indication that something is wrong. It is not enough that Leadership is doing Strategic Planning‐Leadership is also about studying and follow up on results in order to assure impacts on performance. This link seems to be missing in Italian industrial companies

In conducting full‐scale implementation of a total quality management programme an organization's success will depend on how well it can answer two basic questions: ‘where are we now?’ and ‘how do we proceed?’. A quantitative measurement tool developed at Aarhus School of Business and used by a major European corporation gives management an instrument to gauge its level of business excellence and identify important opportunities for improvement.

Traditional quality measurements based on ‘closed’ indicators such as annual results reinforce a management focus on short‐term ‘fire‐fighting’. The development of predictive elements for customer and employee satisfaction opens the way to a measurement system able to drive an improvement cycle.

This paper compares quality management practices in manufacturing companies in the East and the West. It uses data collected from three countries in the East, namely Japan, Korea and Taiwan and compares these with data collected from four countries in the West, namely Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Australia. Twenty‐five Japanese companies, 105 Korean companies, 48 Taiwanese companies, 65 Danish companies, 88 Swedish companies, 18 Finnish companies and 62 companies from Australia responded to the questionnaire. Comparison between the East and the West is carried out on the following: formulation and communication of a quality policy; education and training of employees in quality management; top management participation in quality activities, quality motivation and suggestions; and the use of quality tools and methods. The comparison shows that quality management practices are relatively more widespread in the Eastern companies than in the Western companies. The key differences between the East and the West are identified and suggestions made to close the gap.

The Six Sigma and Lean Production methodologies suggest that creating value for customers is the objective of a production process or an organisation. In the production context, “added value” dominates the discussion about the creation of value to customers. However, “added value” is often only defined conceptually or discussed at a strategic level, and the link between added value and customer value has not yet been well conceptualised. Therefore, the purpose of the paper is to develop a methodology to measure added value in order to complement the existing performance measures in Six Sigma and Lean Production by conceptualising the link between customer value and added value. The conceptual link “confirms” that quality, time, and costs are the elements of added value, which are transformed into a metric to express customer value. The implementation of the metric recommends the adoption of Lean (Six) Sigma and Lean Accounting (Activity Based Costing), which thus implies that “leanness” is an important “feature” of added value.