Unilab has achieved another historic milestone by being the first recipient of the Philippine Quality Award (PQA) for Performance Excellence—the ultimate level of recognition to a company that demonstrates the highest level of organizational excellence, deserving to be a national and global benchmark.
PQA is the country’s counterpart to the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award of the US, based on seven vital criteria, namely: leadership; strategic planning; customer and market focus; measurement, analysis, and knowledge management; workforce focus; process management; and business results. The PQA award puts Unilab in the same league as established multinational companies.
“It is gratifying that all our hard work has paid off in terms of total quality management and performance excellence,” President & CEO Clinton Campos Hess said after the awarding rites last Dec. 16, 2008 at the Heroes’ Hall in Malacanang Palace.
He attributed Unilab’s achievement to the 3,000-strong members of the Unilab workforce, whom he said has nurtured the Bayanihan spirit that enables Unilab to continuously provide Trusted Quality Healthcare to the medical profession, patients, and consumers.
Continual improvement
The top award is Unilab’s second PQA citation. In 2004, it also submitted itself for PQA evaluation and received the Proficiency in Quality Management Award (level 2).
“That the PQA decided to give us the highest award for overall performance excellence is, indeed, a singular honor,” said Chairman Jocelyn Campos Hess. “This is the supreme validation of the quality vision of our Founders, as well as the total quality commitment of Unilab for more than six decades.”
Bayanihan in action
The road to this historic award was challenging and fulfilling. It began in 2004 when Unilab launched Performance Excellence to foster a culture of organizational learning and continual improvement. Unilab created cross-functional teams for the seven vital criteria to internally assess and document Unilab’s processes, which culminated with the Level 2 citation.
The cross-functional teams worked closely together, and capitalized on the learnings and identified opportunities for improvement (OFI) to further strengthen and streamline its organizational processes.
In September 2008, Unilab again subjected itself to an external assessment by the PQA. The PQA assessors’ inputs, together with the judges’ deliberation, determined Unilab’s appropriateness as a national role model based on its excellence as an organization.
Quality as a constant
Started as a small corner drugstore in Manila, Unilab is now the country’s largest and leading pharmaceutical and healthcare company, with over 20 percent market share in an industry dominated by the world’s biggest multinationals.
Unilab touches the lives of millions of Filipinos by manufacturing and marketing over 300 personal care, over-the-counter, and prescription brands covering the major therapeutic categories from common illnesses like cough, colds, pain, allergy, and fever, to diseases like hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, asthma, infections, tuberculosis, ulcer, anemia, and cancer.
Unilab’s unique achievement, thus, affirms its commitment to provide the greatest number of Filipinos with better access to high quality medicines. |
