BHEL becomes first PSU to win ‘Best of its Class Distinction’ from the International Asia Pacific Quality Organization.

Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has added another feather in its cap by becoming the first Public Sector as well as the first engineering and manufacturing organisation in the country to have won the coveted ‘Best of its Class Distinction’ from the International Asia Pacific Quality Organisation (APQO).

BHEL’s Ranipet plant has won the recognition in the big manufacturing category as part of the International Asia Pacific Quality Award (IAPQA – 2005), wherein more than 50 countries participated. The Award will be presented during the 11th APQO Conference, being organized in Hanoi, Vietnam on October 27 & 28, 2005.

The award has been instituted by APQO adopting the criterion of ‘Malcom Baldrige National Award’ in USA and is administered by APQO’s ‘Walter L Hurd Foundation.’

Significantly, only those companies that have won quality awards at a national level in their respective countries are eligible to apply for this prestigious award. BHEL Ranipet participated as it had won the coveted ‘IMC Ramakrishna Bajaj National Quality Award 2004’, where again BHEL was the first Public Sector and the first engineering and manufacturing organisation in the country to have got the award.

Prior to that, four manufacturing units of BHEL located at Haridwar, Trichy, Bhopal and Hyderabad besides its Power Sector-Northern Region were conferred the coveted CII Exim, Commendation Certificate 2004 for business excellence conforming to global standards.

A quality conscious organization with a strong customer focus, BHEL has acquired ISO-9001 (2000 version), ISO-14001 and OHSAS-18001 certification for all its operations. BHEL initiated TQM in 1995 at its Trichy Unit. Later, the concept was extended company-wide and a road map for business excellence was evolved. TQM concepts deployed under the ‘Movement towards Business Excellence’, focused on benchmarking and improving its products and internal processes to global standards

As a result of its thrust on quality and technology, BHEL today enjoys national and international recognition, in the form of certification of products by international bodies like ASME, API etc. Most of the manufacturing plants of BHEL are equipped with state-of-the art testing and calibration labs, which are duly accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Calibration and Testing Labs (NABL).