Searching for quantitative tools to monitor the attainment of TQM objectives, reviews the Japanese, European and American quality awards and discusses their significance to business. The procedures, assessment criteria and benefits of the Deming Application Prize (DP), European Quality Award (EQA) and Malcolm Baldrige Quality Awards (MB) are examined in some detail and compared against each other. It has been found that the DP focuses on the dissemination of company wide quality control, continuous improvement and relations with suppliers. Its most important aspect is the thorough application of statistical QC techniques. The MB accepts that quality is customer‐driven and therefore focuses on customer satisfaction, benchmarking, competitive comparisons with the industry average, the industry leader, and the principal competitors in the company’s key markets. The EQA focuses on the relations with the community, and customers’ and employees’ satisfaction. Finally, another major difference between the DP and the other two is that certain examination criteria such as human resource management, customer satisfaction, impact on society, and operational results are not included in the former.

Advances in decision theory have allowed it to make an effective contribution to the modelling of the decision‐making process. Research work on maintenance decision making using decision theory, however, has received little emphasis to date. For this reason, very little has been done in utilizing two very important decision theory topics, namely utility theory and multi‐attribute utility theory. Investigates possible contributions from decision theory to the maintenance area and develops a framework to solve maintenance decision problems. This framework includes elicitation of both utility functions and prior probability distributions, optimization and sensitivity analysis modules. Details this framework and applies it to a real‐life maintenance problem.

Details how Land‐Rover was one of the leading companies in the UK to adopt total quality management (TQM). Shows that in order to provide both effective and efficient maintenance in accordance with TQM needs, Land‐Rover (LR) reintroduced in 1994 total productive maintenance (TPM) in its manufacturing plant in Birmingham, UK. TQM is not possible without TPM so demonstrates how, in order to achieve its goals, TPM in LR is assisted by a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS). Describes in full the implementation steps of TPM, the difficulties encountered, and the usefulness and necessity of a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) for the successful implementation of TPM in LR.

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PurposeThe European Business Excellence Model (EBEM) is nowadays a familiar framework, used for a spectrum of purposes, with the most frequent aim from its full deployment being the attainment of organizational success. The EBEM's requirements, however, involve abstruse management concepts and thus, there is, frequently, a significant variety within the suggested approaches to face the criteria requirements. Although, such integrated business excellence models should not necessarily be of a very prescriptive nature, allowing for deployment latitude among sectors and types of businesses, a more homogeneous understanding of the suggested approaches to the requirements might be a welcome basis by both academics and business professionals. This paper aims to resolve some of the questionable concepts associated with the practical deployment of EBEM.Design/methodology/approachIntegration of the known literature, stemming from both published articles and best practices already made available, to form a well defined framework of suggested approaches to the EBEM's requirements is the approach taken.FindingsThe findings associated with the first requirement of Sub‐Criterion 1a of the EBEM (“leaders developing the Mission, Vision and Culture”) are reported here.Research limitations/implicationsMost of the relevant information describing current, applicable business practices is not yet publicly available, and has to be deduced mainly from responses to questionnaires/interviews.Originality/valueSpecific frameworks of suggested approaches for the well known EBEM's requirements have not, as yet, been made available in the literature.