SPRING Singapore will once again organize this year's Business Excellence Awards Presentation Ceremony on Tuesday, 7 October 2008.

This is an annual premier event where the Singapore Quality Award (SQA), SQA with Special Commendation, People Excellence Award, Innovation Excellence Award and Service Excellence Award are presented.

These awards, which are conferred by the SQA Governing Council and managed by SPRING Singapore, recognize organizations for attaining high standards of business, people development, innovation and service excellence.

The SQA is the pinnacle award for business excellence. It is presented to organisations which have demonstrated outstanding management capabilities and delivered superior performance on the business excellence framework. Twenty-six organizations have been honoured with this prestigious award since 1995.

The SQA with Special Commendation, launched in 2006, recognises past SQA winners for scaling greater heights of business excellence and demonstrating global leadership in key business areas. The recipients of this award are world-class role models of business excellence that have continued to make significant improvements in their performance after winning the SQA. The SQA with Special Commendation is a one-time award for the winners. Since its launch, two organisations have been conferred the SQA with Special Commendation. In addition to the SQA, there are three niche awards for people, innovation, and service excellence, which are given to organisations that are best of the best on specific dimensions of the business excellence framework.

The awards for people and innovation excellence were launched in 2001, and for service excellence in 2006. Since then, 11 organisations have been conferred the People Excellence Award, seven the Innovation Excellence Award, and one the Service Excellence Award.

Previous winners include

• Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd and Singapore Police Force for SQA with Special Commendation;
• Teckwah Industrial Corporation Ltd and Qian Hu Corporation Ltd for SQA;
• G2000 Apparel (S) Pte Ltd and Frasers Hospitality Pte Ltd for People Excellence;
• Philips Video & Multimedia Applications for Innovation Excellence; and
• Conrad Centennial Singapore for Service Excellence.

International Standing of the Awards
The Business Excellence Framework underpinning the awards is based on universally accepted standards found in the US Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, European Excellence Award, Australian Business Excellence Award and Japan Quality Award.

This framework covers seven categories of:

1. Leadership,
2. Planning,
3. Information,
4. People,
5. Processes,
6. Customers and
7. Results.

SPRING Singapore is a member of the Global Excellence Model (GEM) Council. Other members of this council include business excellence award administrators in the US, Japan, Europe, Australia, India and South America.

As the administrator of the Business Excellence Awards, SPRING's affiliation with the GEM Council ensures that Singapore's business excellence framework is aligned with models adopted for the premier business excellence awards in the world. It also ensures that the award assessment process is as rigorous as those of the premier international business excellence awards. ET

To learn more about the success stories of the Business Excellence Award Winners , join us at the 2008 Business Excellence Awards. Winners Sharing on 17 and 18 November at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel. For more information,contact our Business and Service Excellence Division on tel: (65) 6279 3811, e-mail: be@spring.gov.sg or visit www.spring.gov.sg