Quality and Business Excellence

Philips continuously explores new ways to improve in order to offer innovative products and solutions to its customers. That’s why we have created a suite of programs and initiatives through which we will reach increasingly higher quality levels in all products and services. These improvement programs affect all our employees and all our processes, in every country, sector or department, encompassing everyone from Board of Management to the shop floor.

Our approach

Philips embraces a customer-centric approach, which means that the customer is at the heart of every initiative taken from creation to execution. Customer centric thinking is the basis of all excellence and quality programs in Philips.


The programs and initiatives are firmly anchored in the strategy and execution of every business, through many common initiatives like the Black Belt program, the improvement team competition, 6 sigma and lean programs. Philips businesses differ, so each of them also has specific initiatives to improve their products and processes.


Speed and Teamwork lie at the heart of every improvement initiative. Each and every individual within Philips knows that only by fully cooperating and working together will we be able to perfect our business processes. That's why we focus on: working more smartly and reducing the cycle-time of processes; working in teams and learning from the best practices of others.
Philips strongly supports benchmarking as an instrument for learning and sharing. Building on the approach of Open Innovation Philips invites other companies to exchange good practices to create mutual advantages.

Measures

Philips believes that the ultimate measure is the quality level of our products and services. This is measured through the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Next to that Philips has several measures to monitor business improvement like process maturity using process survey tools, improvement contribution from Black Belt projects, engagement increase from the team competition and many other leading process indicators.


Philips strives to give equal attention to all of its stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders and the society, with the following objectives:

 

  • Customers are fully satisfied by the quality of our products and services
  • Employees develop and use their full potential
  • Shareholders get a premium return on their investment
  • Suppliers choose to work with us as this generates superior value for both
  • The larger community appreciates our contribution to the quality of life

 

Frame of reference

Philips is an active member of EFQM and many other organizations that provide tools and opportunities for business improvement.


Philips uses the EFQM excellence model as the frame of reference for excellent business and process management. The principles behind this model are fully embedded in the organization and are reflected in the way we deal with all our stakeholders and the way we run our processes.

 

Philips believes that it is in the interest of the business world to share its approaches and therefore it has provided its process survey tools to the EFQM free-of-charge.