Dr. Manu Vora, Recipient of 2014 Harrington/Ishikawa Medal

NAPERVILLE, IL: The Asia Pacific Quality Organization (APQO) has selected Dr. Manu K. Vora as a recipient of the 2014 Harrington/Ishikawa Medal. The Medal will be presented at the 20th Asia Pacific Quality Conference from November 23-25, 2014 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This award is given annually to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the advancement of quality in the Asia Pacific region.

Over the last 39 years, Dr. Vora has contributed to Global Management Thinking. He is Chairman and President of Business Excellence, Inc., a global quality management consulting service firm. He has  guided Fortune 500 companies with Baldrige Performance Excellence Award assessment in the areas of leadership excellence, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and process improvement. He is a Past Vice President from the American Society for Quality (ASQ) National Board of Directors. He also served as a Chairperson for ASQ Chicago Section. He is an ASQ Fellow and Certified Quality Engineer (CQE). Manu served as a Chief Judge at the Illinois Team Excellence Award Program from 1993-1999. He is a member of Board of Examiners of the  Asia Pacific Global Performance Excellence Award (GPEA) Program since 2004.

    Dr. Vora holds an MBA with Marketing Management from the Keller Graduate School of Management in Chicago, M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago, and B.S.in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi in India. He is a sought after speaker on  business excellence and quality management topics for local, regional, national, and international audiences. He   has over 385 presentations around the world in Africa, Asia Pacific, Caribbean, Central America, Europe, Latin   America, the Middle East, and the United States. He has published over 50 articles in professional journals and   conference proceedings. In 2005, he authored “Managing Human Capital” chapter in the Six Sigma for      Transactions and Service book published by McGraw-Hill. In 2012, Dr. Vora was invited to be an ASQ Influential Voice and he has written 31 blog posts. His posts are at http://voraonquality.blogspot.com. 

Dr. Vora has made significant contributions to Social Responsibility and Community Service areas. For over 21 years, Dr. Vora as an Adjunct Professor has taught Operations Management, Quality Management, Supply Chain Management, Project Management, Human Resource Management, Sustainable Change Management, and Risk Management courses at business schools in the USA and India. He is affiliated with over 33 educational institutions around the globe. He has taught well over 7,500 people globally through academic teaching and executive training. On April 7, 2013, he gave a TEDx Talk – “Leveraging Social Responsibility to Unite the World” at TEDxIITBHU,  Varanasi, India (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94kXi9WTl04).

    For over 44 years Dr Vora has dedicated his life to community service. In 1989, under his leadership, the Blind  Foundation for India (BFI) was established to serve over 15 million visually impaired people in India which accounts   for one third of the world’s blind population. BFI team has raised over $3.5 million to support 110,000 free Cataract  operations, distributed over 10,000 Braille Kits to blind children for their education, donated 110 mobile vans for transporting eye doctors and patients, and examined over 500,000 school-going children for their eye sight and   provided necessary interventions. So far, over one million people in India have their eye sight checked through   BFI. On April 13, 2013, he gave a TEDx Talk – “Exponential Power of the Gift of Giving” at TEDxIIT Chicago,  USA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-fmkivYcVg&feature=share). Since 1970, Dr. Vora has raised over  $8 million for a variety of charitable and professional causes.