Supporting excellence in businesses
The Dubai Quality Award was announced recently to honour quality in various industry sectors in the emirate.
In a virtual ceremony held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai and part of the Business Excellence Awards, the 2019 assessment cycle for the awards saw a new category under the Dubai Quality Award (DQA) — the ‘Dubai Smart Industry Award’ — involving the industrial sector in the excellence march in Dubai and encouraging the digital transformation of industries in line with the objective set in the Dubai Industrial Strategy 2030. The new category has been instituted by the Business Excellence Department in Dubai Economy in partnership with Dubai Exports, the export promotion agency of Dubai Economy.
The Dubai Quality Award, initiated in 1994, is based on the Excellence Model used by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM). The latter has been successfully applied in European private and public sector organisations since 1992.
This model provides a holistic framework for organisational excellence. All nine criteria work as one complete system, such that any deficiency in one area will affect the score in other areas. The model does not deny that the system has parts, but it focuses on the whole, where the whole is larger than the sum of its parts. The model was designed to be non-prescriptive, to acknowledge the fact that there may be more than one approach for achieving excellence. To help you implement the model, DQA provide training, assessment tools and recognition.
Since its inception, the DQA has received the patronage of His Highness
Sheikh Mohammed, who has been instrumental in driving the quality movement across the private and public sectors in the emirate.
The DQA winners are honoured in four categories — the Gold Category, the Dubai Quality Award, the Dubai Quality Appreciation Award, and the Dubai Quality Global Award. The awards were distributed in key sectors — government, manufacturing, finance, professional, tourism, services, trade, construction, education, healthcare, free zones, transportation, logistics, media, leisure and entertainment, real estate, retail and representative entities.
DHDA recognises the long-term commitment of the private sector to human resources development. Given in three categories — the Gold Category, the Dubai Human Development Award and the Dubai Human Development Appreciation Award — the award covers the trade, manufacturing, construction, professional, services, tourism, education, healthcare, financial services, free zones, transportation, logistic.
LuLu Hypermarket Al Qusais was bestowed with the coveted DQA award in the retail category this year. The UAEbased LuLu Group, founded by chairman and managing director Yusuffali MA, has been a winner even in the past. Through strategic partnerships, the group successfully runs 193 outlets including hypermarkets and supermarkets and up to 13 malls in the GCC.
Yusuffali, who has been a part of the rise and the rapid expansion of the UAE’s vibrant retail industry during his time in the UAE, believes that such government initiatives provide the much-needed impetus to the private enterprises to grow and flourish and help build a stellar economy for the UAE.
“The UAE is a nation of the entrepreneurs and very few nations have shown the streak of innovation. The entrepreneur quotient that the nation has displayed in the last few years has set benchmarks across the globe. This sense of entrepreneurship has been fostered by the UAE’s wise leadership and Rulers who had the foresight to support and promote talent as they built the pillars to take the UAE forward.
“On behalf of the LuLu Group, I would like to offer my heartfelt gratitude to DED and DQA for bestowing this honour upon us. With this recognition, LuLu Group will be able to achieve further success in its quest for consistent growth in the coming years.”
The Dubai Quality Award encourages and motivates companies and institutions to adopt a policy of excellence, provide the best services, and recognise best practices in performance excellence.
Excellent partnerships and collaborations between the UAE government and private enterprises has been a catalyst that has pushed the UAE’s food retail sector into an upward trajectory. Constantly thinking out of the box, the UAE has successfully come up with solutions that have helped businesses to innovate across all facets of the industry.
The UAE retail market, the food retail being the largest, was valued at $55 billion in 2019 and is projected to grow to $75 billion by 2025 due to various factors such as rising per capita income, growing tourism industry, increasing expatriate population and rising number of upcoming development projects in the country.
The entrepreneurship spirit has been fostered by the UAE’s wise leadership and the Rulers who had the foresight to support and promote talent as they built the pillars to take the UAE forward.
Yusuffali MA, chairman and managing director of LuLu Group