About Quest

Why QuEST

The QuEST by Kaizen Hansei, a strategic partner of the Kaizen Institute, India, is designed to be a merit driven initiative, with Service Excellence aspirations of the industry participants in mind.

Today, with rapidly transformative and disruptive changes sweeping across value chains, it is necessary for one to be continually introspective of their readiness into the future. It can be credibly tested only by somebody who has spent sufficient field time in helping existing companies become lean and flexible…. and most importantly, inculcate a culture where transformation sustains.

The QuEST program embodies all that one would need to know and would need to take care of, if one is to derive genuine long-term benefits of persisting on this path. Within any organisation, nothing speaks better than the results! (The program is conceptualized as a facilitator program and a program that has an organisation’s long term interest in mind.)

It not only helps benchmark an existing state of excellence in a realistic way but also provides a seasoned advisory on what needs to be done for emulating the best in the industry.

THE IDEOLOGY

Sustained Service Excellence is neither an accident and nor is it something that can happen spontaneously or without planning. It happens when visionary planning is complemented by meticulous and resolute implementation excellence and topped with adequate amounts of policy deployment based monitoring.

The On-site assessment methodology embodies a sound evaluation of the very foundations (The Enablers) that culturally makes up and differentiates various service organizations. It further goes on to evaluate the direction and effectiveness of deploying this into reality (by means of the Drivers involved as well as the Direction Setting Initiatives undertaken). Process Excellence initiatives are reviewed, so as to assess the Leanness and Flexibility of Service delivery, including the extended Supply chain.

THE QuEST ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK *

QuEST Prize Canvas

Salient Benefits of Applying

1. This initiative will map your efforts on Service Excellence and assign a particular maturity zone for the current state. It will further elaborate on where one is doing good and where one needs to improve, so as to build a world-class organisation.
   • 80% of service excellence initiatives fail midway, either citing lack of worker discipline or loss of management focus. The assessment will strive to identify and highlight their issues, in advance of their becoming threats. Hence the advisories must be taken very seriously,
2. A career move for hospitality professionals in various organisations to learn from the experts as to what sustains operational excellence.

What makes it special?

• Kaizen, is a global brand name and undisputedly one of the finest names that evokes respect in this space.
• It is for those seeking to implement an effective and sustainable Continuous Improvement program in their organisations.
• The assessments are conducted by professionals of repute and who have enormous experience in having transformed and initiated a culture of continuous improvement in supply chain organisations.
• Our value definition allows us to indulge in only those activities and initiatives that add value and facilitates excellence in client organizations.
  • Expect to validate your service/customer excellence program and projects
  • Expect to identify additional projects which will expedite your journey along this path
  • Expect to add value to your own teamwork, team spirit, and team-based learning
  • Expect to gain out of the experience and wisdom of assessors, industry benchmarking and cross-industry learning… and much more

Pedigree

Kaizen Hansei LLP is a strategic partner of the Kaizen Institute India (for more details visit www.kaizenhansei.in and www.in.kaizen.com)

Who should consider applying?

• All serious disciples of lean and related to hospitality excellence.
• All organisations that want to have a quick reality check on the progress and maturity status of their efforts.
• Those who want to make a positive statement towards stakeholder value enhancement
• Organisations that believe in meritorious and credible recognitions. An accolade should be the natural outcome of an established process….and/but not the end in itself.
• A meritorious and fair based recognition will have a motivating effect on teams and internal initiatives… thus facilitating the cause of continuous improvement.

Qualifying Criteria

All passionate disciples of service excellence are welcome to participate. They could be following any of the popular streams of excellence that exist today. (The assessment is agnostic to this aspect and treats all efforts equally, as long as they are in the right direction).

All interested applicants are encouraged to self-audit themselves, by requesting for the same from quest@kaizenhansei.in. You may base your decision of participation on the outcome of the self-audit.

Categories

The categories of participation are at two levels;

Organisation

Organisations will be classified into categories based on their turnover & size. Besides, the assessed organisations will be mentioned to reflect their thematic definition, such as Star rating, Heritage, Resorts, Business Hotels, Boutique, Business Hotels, Jungle Lodges, etc. However, from an acknowledgement perspective there are four specific categories for organisations to Challenge.

First is the Certification category at an entry level, Next is the Silver Medallion, then the Gold Medallions (5 Stars) and finally the elite band of Platinum Medallion (7 Stars).

Typically a Certification is for one that scores in the range of 400 to 600, Silver Medallion is in the range of 600 to 800 and Gold Medallion is in the range of 700-800. The Platinum site is typically one which scores over 800 in the assessment.

Individual

These are acknowledgments given to individuals professionals in various assessee organisations, who have impressed the assessors by their dedication, knowledge, and implementation abilities of continuous improvement principles and lean principles within their incumbent organisations.

This category is strictly by invitation. It is purely based on contribution to a larger cause of promoting CI principles; It DOES NOT expect the nominees to have done any sort of promotional work, either directly or indirectly, for either Kaizen or QuEST or Hansei.

It must be emphasized that one of the necessary criteria for the nominees in this category is the larger impact and influence they have had on the immediate peer group and the industry in general (on matters that pertain to operational excellence, lean implementation, and continuous improvement.)

The candidates being considered must command the respect of a “teacher” and have an expert/ mentor standing in the industry.