2.1. Concepts Overview
The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) has played a vital role in the field of business excellence and quality management. EFQM was established in 1992 in European countries as a business excellence model. It was initially created to enhance and assess quality management practices in organizations. Over the years, EFQM was updated and revised in 1999 and 2003 [
3]. These updates likely reflected the evolving understanding of quality management principles and practices.
EFQM continued changing to adapt different business environments and management paradigms. It underwent crucial modifications in 2010 and 2013 [5]. EFQM’s influence extended far beyond Europe to be recognized and adopted not only within Europe but also in other regions of the world, including the Middle East, Asia, South America, and South Africa. This global reach is evidence to the model’s adaptability and applicability in diverse cultural and industry contexts.
EFQM’s versatility is evident in its application across various industries, including education [
4] information technology [6], healthcare [7], and more. This adaptability reflects its effectiveness as a business excellence model with wide applicability. Applying the EFQM model has positive effect on the sustainability of stakeholders within organizations [7]. This come along with the broader objective of business excellence models, which aim to drive overall organizational improvement and long-term success.
EFQM is adopted by numerous global organizations as a business model success and this goes back to its success and rapid evolution. Furthermore, it is recognized as a valuable framework for achieving excellence and continuous improvement.
EFQM has evolved over the years to stay relevant and effective in supporting organizations in their excellence journey. Its global acceptance and application across a wide range of industries represent its enduring value in the field of quality management and business excellence [9]. EFQM model experienced massive evolution which is summarized in the following figure.
Figure 2.
EFQM evolution summary.
Figure 2.
EFQM evolution summary.
The EFQM model appears to have incorporated additional criteria and elements to better address contemporary challenges and organizational needs as shown in
Figure 3. The criteria in this modified EFQM model in 2013 include leadership, people, strategy, partnership and resources, processes, people results, customer results, society results, and key results
Learning, creativity, and innovation are added to the EFQM model. It highlights the importance of continuous learning, creativity, and innovation in achieving excellence and competitiveness in today’s dynamic business environment. The inclusion of "Learning, Creativity, and Innovation" shows the recognition that organizations must adapt and innovate to stay competitive and address evolving customer and market demands. This modification goes along with the broader trends in business management, focusing on the need for organizations to be agile and forward thinking.
This modified EFQM model provides a more comprehensive framework for assessing and enhancing organizational excellence, considering a wider range of factors that contribute to sustained success and innovation.
European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) is a business excellence model where the organizations applying it meet the sustainability of the stakeholders [8]. It can be used in different sectors like education [
4] and information technology [6] health care [7], construction [27].
EFQM framework is made up of the following main principles as described in [28];
Result orientation;
Customer orientation;
Leadership and consistency of objectives;
Management by processes and facts;
Development and involvement of people;
Development of partnerships;
Social responsibility of the organizations.
To implement these principles, we need three phases: Initiation, realization and maturity [27]. EFQM is divided into 2 categories, which are enablers and results. Enablers’ criteria are responsible for key activities management. The results criteria are responsible for the way the results of an organization are achieved. The criteria include leadership, strategy, people, alliances, resources, processes, products and services [7]. EFQM can be also applied to many domains like the education [
4], banking, hotels, public sectors [9], and construction like the case done in Turkey [27].
Most EFQM papers referred to in this paper were held in Spain, published in 2015 and 2023 and mostly applied in the healthcare and education sectors as shown in
Figure 4.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a field of computer science and technology that emphasizes on creating systems and machines that can perform jobs requiring human intelligence. These tasks include reasoning, problem-solving, learning, perception, language understanding, and decision-making [8]. AI research began in the 1950s with the target of creating machines that can mimic human intelligence. Early AI systems were rule-based and relied on explicit programming to simulate human reasoning. However, these systems did not work well in complex real-world problems. Therefore, machine learning- a subset of AI- emerged in the 1970s. It introduced a paradigm shift by emphasizing on the ability of machines to learn from data and enhance their performance without being explicitly programmed.
Machine learning’s fundamental concept is to allow computers to learn and adapt from data. This is achieved through various algorithms that can specify patterns, make predictions, and make decisions relative to the data they are provided [12]. Machine learning allows machines to develop their own programs based on previously learned examples. This is achieved through training on large datasets, where the machine learns the underlying patterns and relationships in the data [8]. Machine learning is widely applied in terrorism prediction [10], cancer prediction [13], and sports result prediction [14]. These applications leverage the ability of machine learning algorithms to find hidden patterns and correlations in data. Machine learning techniques are classified into categories: supervised learning, unsupervised learning, semi-supervised learning, reinforcement learning, and deep learning as shown in
Figure 5 [12].
Machine learning continues to advance rapidly and has become a basic tool in various fields, including healthcare, finance, natural language processing, computer vision, and autonomous systems. Its potential to extract valuable patterns from data makes it a powerful technology with a wide range of applications.
Recently machine learning has spread over many applications and industries. It can be found in web search, siris, pricing prediction, transportation, crime prediction, and healthcare [30]. Unfortunately, few papers talked about using AI in predicting EFQM scores. Therefore, this paper comes out with a framework combining AI techniques into the EFQM model. In this framework, k-means unsupervised machine learning technique is adopted.
Unsupervised leaning works on finding common input points in the data as the previously trained. Clustering of inputs is a good description of this process where the inputs are correlated based on their statistical properties.
Unsupervised data learning method do not need any labeled output to train the algorithm. It is more subjective since human will not interfere as in supervised learning [32]. The main objective of unsupervised learning is to learn more about data by identifying patterns found in the data itself. In other words, it learns by itself an input pattern and compares it with the following input patterns.
The K-means clustering is a simple and powerful unsupervised machine learning technique that works with most industries [33]. It groups similar inputs together to form meaningful clusters. Therefore, clustering is the process of dividing data into groups or clusters sharing the same characteristics and minimizing data distances within the same cluster [33].
In this research paper, K-means clustering (k=2) which is an unsupervised machine learning technique is applied and accuracy score values are calculated.
Literature review shows the injection of AI into different fields and
Table 1 represents some of these papers.
Integrating AI following ISO/IEC 23053 into business excellence models represents a crucial need in academia and the marketplace. This integrated framework has the potential to drive efficiency, cost savings, innovation, and competitive benefits for organizations, making it a valuable area of study and application.
After applying AI in many industries like medicine to predict breast cancer [23], and in dental education [35], and its massive use during the Covid 19 pandemic, appeared the crucial need for AI to be ISO certified. Therefore, ISO/IEC 23053 standard for AI has emerged to fulfill the necessity of standardization and to regulate and certify AI techniques.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO), an independent, nongovernmental international organization, has begun to develop standards around AI along with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) through Subcommittee 42 of the two organizations’ Joint Technical Committee (JTC) 1. The ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42 process is in its early stages and has produced a number of drafts currently being developed in committee around AI topics including ISO/IEC WD 22989: Artificial intelligence concepts and terminology, and ISO/IEC WD 23053: framework for artificial intelligence (AI) systems using machine learning (ML). This ISO framework is built on previous ISO standards such as ISO/IEC 22989. It digs deeper into machine learning. It also reshapes AI related concepts into a framework and explains how machine learning algorithms are developed. This standard is widely used among experts and non-practitioners. This standard has many advantages:
It makes more advanced use of AI [36];
Machine learning features like accuracy and explainability are interpreted and set in an international frame [37];
It gives AI standardization for policing software explored [38].
Therefore, ISO/IEC 23053 emerged to give standardization for machine learning of AI. The ISO/IEC 23053 includes stages like: task (problem definition), model, data, software tools and techniques [25]. Moreover, ISO/IEC 23053 designed the machine learning framework consisting of AI system life cycle and machine learning pipeline as shown in Figure 5 previously. ISO/ IEC 23053 standard adds regulations to the properties of AI like risk management, security, explainability, and fairness [25].
AI is adopted worldwide and in various industries like health [15] manufacturing [16], and marketing [24]. It was proved valuable during the COVID 19 pandemic. The emergence of ISO/IEC 23053 is indeed significant, as it provides a standardized framework for AI, which is crucial for ensuring the responsible and effective use of AI technologies. ISO/IEC 23053 also introduces a machine learning framework that includes the AI system life cycle and machine learning pipeline. This framework likely helps decision makers in organizations structure their AI projects and ensures that they follow a systematic approach from problem definition to deployment.
Figure 6 consists of AI life cycle along with machine learning ML pipeline as described by the new ISO/ IEC 23053 standard. This standard adds some properties and regulations to AI concerning risk management, governance, security, privacy, accountability, transparency, explainability, safety, resilience, robustness and fairness.
Figure 5 shows that AI life cycle is made up of seven stages which are inception, design and development, verification and validation, deployment, operation and monitoring, re-evaluate, and retirement. These stages are mapped into this paper’s research framework. Moreover, the ML pipeline cycle consists of six stages, which are data acquisition, data preparation, modeling, verification and validation, model deployment and operation.
ISO/IEC 23053 includes several important aspects that should be considered throughout the AI life cycle and ML pipeline, like risk management, governance, security, privacy, accountability, transparency, explainability, safety, resilience, robustness, and fairness [23]. These aspects are crucial for responsible and ethical AI development and deployment.
ISO/IEC 23053 seeks to promote responsible and ethical AI development and deployment. This standardization effort helps establish a common framework for AI development that can be adopted by organizations and industries to ensure the reliability, safety, and fairness of AI systems.
After reviewing literature papers about business excellence models (EFQM), artificial intelligence and machine learning, gaps are introduced. The main gap lies in integrating artificial intelligence into EFQM business excellence model to enhance operational excellence. Few papers were found studying the effect of artificial intelligence on operational excellence. Some papers mentioned the AI effect on economy, and marketing. Dirican C. stated the effects of artificial intelligence on business and economy. He also mentioned the human replacement by robots. The AI invasion will result in higher rate of unemployment, which will affect the economy [17]. So, this research paper’s framework:
Enriches the knowledge body by injecting AI into business excellence models (EFQM);
Enhances operational excellence;
Is applied to any sector worldwide;
Saves time and money before applying to EFQM excellence award.