A TEST OF THE EFQM EXCELLENCE MODEL OF TQM

The European Foundation Quality Model (EFQM) is based on nine criteria. Five of these are ‘Enablers’ and four are ‘Results.’ The ‘Enabler’ criteria cover what an organization does and lead to the ‘Result’ criteria that represent what an organization achieves. Feedback from ‘Result’ criteria help to improve ‘Enabler’ criteria. A test of the EFQM quality model is performed here to study the relationship between the level of implementation of the model and the firm’s performance. Firms with low level of quality implementation in all criteria show low results while firms with high level of quality implementation in all criteria show the highest results. However, firms with partial implementation of quality did not significantly improve their results. This article extends the work of Garcia-Bernal, et. al (2004) by utilizing multiple correspondence analysis to visually show relationships among 32 dummy variables showing four levels of quality at four groups of 34 firms representing four levels of quality implementation.