On Thursday, October 9, 2003, Dr. Klaus Peter Fouquet, general manager of Bosch Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., received the award at a ceremony held in the Finland's capital Helsinki and attended by the Finnish President Tarja Halonen. This award was the recognition of Bosch's highly successful implementation of the EFQM Model for Organisational Excellence in its Bursa Unit.

2003 marked the 12th running of the European Quality Award, which is bestowed by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM). In the Operational Units category, Bosch was one of four applicants to reach the final, where it surpassed strong contestants from Denmark, Spain and the United Kingdom to win the award. In 2003, companies and public institutions from Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, Norway, Ukraine, Turkey and Greece competed for the European Quality Award, which is regarded as Europe's most prestigious award for Organisational Excellence.

The general manager of Bosch San. ve Tic. A.S., Dr. Klaus Peter Fouquet, spoke at a gala dinner held following the announcement of the prize winners, which was also attended by the Finnish President Tarja Halonen. He emphasized that Excellence, which he defined as the highest level of quality, was the guiding principle of Robert Bosch when he laid the foundation to the company's success with the small workshop he set up in Stuttgart at the end of the 19th century. Fouquet pointed out that the year 1996, when Bosch Turkey introduced the EFQM Excellence Model, marked a turning-point on the road to quality, and continued:

"When we started implementing the EFQM Excellence Model, our goal was to maximize our profitability by achieving superior operational results. However, after we had begun to employ the model, we realized that the underlying philosophy of this system is much more comprehensive. The EFQM Excellence Model not only helped us to improve our processes at Bosch, it also furthered the approaches and attitudes of both our managers and our employees, reshaped our corporate culture, and provided guidance for all activities of our company. Here and today, we are crowning this process of great change and development with Europe's most important quality prize." Fouquet thanked everybody who supported them on the road to Excellence, especially the employees of the Bursa, to whom his addressed his final words in Turkish: 'çok tesekkürler - thank you very much'.

The European Quality Award is awarded to the organisation that displays a superior organisational performance and is best at implementing the approach of continuous improvement. The assessment is carried out according to the EFQM Excellence Model, which is based on nine model criteria: Leadership, Policy and Strategy, People, Partnerships and Resources, Processes, Customer Results, People Results, Society Results, and Key Performance Results.

Please visit the EFQM's website at:
http://www.efqm.org