Soft drink major Pepsi’s Madurai bottling plant has been awarded the prestigious Golden Peacock National Quality Award for the year 2001. The award set up by the Institute of Directors (IOD) in 1991 to encourage Total Quality Improvements was presented to Pepsi at the inaugural session of the 12th World Congress on Total Quality at Mumbai on Saturday.

Modelled on the lines of the famous Malcolm Baldrige Business Excellence Award, the Golden Peacock National Quality Award is presented to organisations that have made the most significant improvement in various business and industry sectors.

Receiving the award, Mr Pradeep Sardana, executive director (operations), PepsiCo India Holdings, said ‘‘PepsiCo has taken effective steps during the last 10 years to not only benchmark the best quality standards existing in all developing countries but also surpass them and set very high standards of its own. No wonder, the India Business Unit is the only one among the PepsiCo system worldwide to have received

six International Quality (IQA) Gold awards in 2001.’’

Pepsi’s Madurai plant has received this award under the

Manufacturing Sector for Medium and Small Enterprises. The evaluation process of the award is based on an assessment of a team which looks at Organisational Leadership, Strategic Planning, Information Management, Human Resource Management,

Process Management, Employees and Customer Satisfaction, Impact on Society and Business Results.

In addition to the Madurai plant, the other bottling plants of Pepsi which won the IQA Gold award for 2001 include, Bazpur (Uttaranchal), Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh), Naroda (Gujarat) and Mahul (Maharashtra).

Earlier Pepsi’s Mr Vikram Tandon, head of operations, for South Asia Business Unit, was appointed vice-president, technical operations of PepsiCo Worldwide, to be based at the company’s headquarters in New York.