The Excellence Summit

THE WORLD IS SWIFTLY becoming more global, and new technologies being launched every day. This is beneficial for customers, but challenging for organisations. Approaching the future with the characteristics of globalisation and fast development, superior management of quality and customer interactions will be a competitive edge. But what will the future of quality look like and what will be the quality of our future? These questions will be in focus of the 2020 Excellence Summit.

The Excellence Summit is inspired by the biannual conference Kvalitetsmässan, which began in 1989 and has expanded to be the world´s largest quality conference within the public sector. The 2015 conference had 4400 participants and approximately 7500 visitors. Sharing the same organizational structure, the new Excellence Summit conference will instead focus on quality and excellence in commercial enterprises.

Founders and coordinators of the conference are Henrik Edman, CEO Kvalitetsmässan; Mats Deleryd, CEO Swedish Institute for Quality (SIQ); and Lars Sörqvist, CEO Sandholm Associates. The conference is partnering with the Organization for Business Excellence Sweden, the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and the International Academy for Quality (IAQ).

– The goal is to create an arena where managers and researchers from different business areas and countries can engage, be inspired, share experiences and listen to exciting speakers within the field of quality management and business excellence, explains Henrik Edman.

The Excellence Summit differs from Kvalitetsmässan in the sense of being an international conference; with speakers from many different countries. Since our partners are international frontrunners in the field, we expect many renowned experts.

In addition to the partner organizations involved, major international companies will be represented.
– The Excellence Summit focuses on how a successful, sustainable business development can be achieved through focus on innovation and continual improvement, says Mats Deleryd.
The conference will enable meetings between relevant people, ranging from engaged business leaders to leading researchers. The conference targets service-related and manufacturing companies, private as well as public corporations.
– By bringing people together from the entire world, we hope to build new important connections between both individuals and organizations. Something that is very important as quality and business excellence today is a global question as companies today often are acting worldwide, says Lars Sörqvist.

The Excellence Summit conference is scheduled to include sessions where participants will be able to listen to influential speakers from companies and organizations from the business world and furthermore take advantage of the latest academic results in the field of quality. There will also be parallel sessions in which the participants can choose between several relevant up-to-date areas, such as:

• Meeting strategies through quality and strategies for quality  
• Improving quality through digitalization and quality of digitalization 
• Sustainability through quality and achieving a sustainable quality development

Additional activities in Gothenburg, such as study visits to leading companies, guided tours, and social events are also planned to be arranged in connection to the conference. The Excellence Summit will take place at the Swedish Exhibition & Conference Centre in Gothenburg, Sweden.