IMPROVEMENT POSSIBILITIES OF THE EUROPEAN BUSINESS EXCELLENCE MODEL

Companies striving for better business performance and efficiency may use definite quality improvement methods that guarantee the improvement of business results. Business excellence models is one of the instruments used by the companies with the aim to succeed. European Foundation for Quality Management defined the benchmarking guidelines of EFQM business excellence model in early 90-ies of the 20th century, and keep them updating periodically. The excellence model is a structure envisaged for the interpretation of excellence guidelines in performance. In order to facilitate the benefits from the EFQM adoption in the company, the management shall initially ensure the compliance of the business activities to the aforementioned excellence benchmarking guidelines. If the company fails to understand and accept the guidelines entirely, the mastering of the model can be complicated and even pointless for any type of the business. EFQM guidelines serve to analyse the performance of the company and justify the adoption of the model in the level of top management. The aim of paper is to explore the improvement possibilities of the performance quality assessment in Latvian enterprises, basing on EFQM business excellence model. The hypothesis is: improving the EFQM business excellence model used in the performance quality assessment in Latvian companies by including important topical criteria and integrating them into conventional criteria of the model could to drive it to higher level of excellence. The tasks: to study the principles of European business excellence model; to assess and verify by Latvian and foreign business excellence and quality experts the assumptions included in the EFQM business excellence model with author 's improvements; to draw the conclusions and make proposals.