We Add Taste to Life and Excellence to Our Business

The Coca-Cola İçecek Ankara plant was awarded the “Quality Grand Prize” at the KalDer National Quality Awards for its high performance in the implementation of the EFQM Excellence Model.  Coca-Cola İçecek Turkey Region President, Burak Başarır congratulated employees on the success.

Reaching a consumer population of over 360 million with 20 plants in 10 countries across Turkey, Pakistan, Central Asia and the Middle East, as well as 9000 employees, Coca-Cola İçecek was awarded the “Quality Grand Prize” under the Operational Unit Category at the 19th KalDer National Quality Awards. The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) represented by KalDer in Turkey recognizes pioneers in quality. This year, the awards ceremony was held at the Istanbul Convention and Exhibition Centre on the 30th of November.

The Coca-Cola İçecek Ankara plant was considered worthy of this distinguished award with its excellent practices from its manufacturing process to its consumers.  Burak Başarır, CCI Turkey Regional President, stated that quality is the focal point for all processes and noted:

“We at Coca-Cola İçecek aim to be the best company in Turkey in the fast moving consumer goods industry. Our quality excellence has played a key role in allowing us to reach our goals. Our associates throughout all our departments in 8 plants in Turkey, from supply chain to human resources and sales to marketing, have been working towards a better service model.  This prize is the outcome of their outstanding efforts.  Our Ankara plant, which started its quality journey with ISO 9002 in 1998 and integrated EFQM four years ago into all its operations, also won the Quality Achievement Award last year.  I sincerely congratulate my associates who have been working tirelessly and have achieved an even greater success with yet another award this year.”

19th year of the National Quality Awards

The five stage Excellence Model, established by the EFQM, is represented by KalDer in Turkey and it is a program that supports companies to make systematic improvement and motivates them to be more successful in the future. The National Quality Awards are also given in five stages and 2011 marks the 19th year of the award program.

The National Quality Awards evaluation process lasts approximately 10 months.  Candidate companies prepare an application that describes their systems and performance results according to 32 criteria given by the EFQM Excellence Model. After the applications are evaluated by a team of 6-8 people, the companies that score higher than the set minimum score are qualified as finalists.  The information stated in the application is verified with a field visit made to the finalist companies and the results are presented to the National Quality Awards Jury.

The National Quality Awards Jury Panel, which consists of academicians and top executives from the companies and institutions that implement the Excellence Model, was convened at the Presidential Palace on November 23, 2011. The panel examined the evaluation results and determined the institutions to be awarded.