EVALUATION OF OPERATION OF LATVIAN LARGE AND SMALL & MEDIUM ENTERPRISES ACCORDING TO THE EUROPEAN BUSINESS EXCELLENCE MODEL CRITERIA

Enterprises implement the business excellence models being aware of the fact that these models stimulate to take over the best practice and use tools implying elaboration of quality strategies, self-assessment and continuous striving to improvement. EFQM (European foundation for quality management) business excellence model is applied to ensure successful operation of the company, including increased satisfaction of the customers regarding the goods/services offered by the company, thus guaranteeing high competitiveness of the business. EFQM model is simple, easy-to-understand and practically applicable in any company. However, the application options may differ between large and small & medium companies. The aim to explore the level of performance of EFQM business excellence model in Latvian enterprises, make conclusion and gives proposals for improvement performance of results of model criteria. The tasks of the research are to provide the theoretical description of EFQM model, analyse the EFQM model application level in Latvian enterprises, come to conclusions and elaborate proposals. Methodology of the research includes studies and analysis of relevant literature and EFQM model-survey carried out in the companies. First, the company shall start with the general assessment of current situation, identifying the areas of problems and potential improvement. Besides, the company must be aware that copying of methods applied by other successful companies never lead to success. The company must firstly understand the methods applied by the successful competitor and then customize them according to their own profile. The results of the survey shows that the level of compliance to the EFQM criteria depends on a lot of factors of the company - size, awareness of management etc.