Grundfos Wins the Prestigious EFQM Award

Among 27 finalists, Grundfos A/S won the EFQM Excellence Award – Award winner and the EFQM Excellence Award - Prize winner for Corporate Social Responsibility and EFQM Excellence Award - Prize winner for People Development & Involvement.

In its grounds, EFQM states that Grundfos A/S today is an operating unit amongst the best in Europe with an inspirational way to achieve excellent results in many fields, by putting business excellence at the core of their culture in line with the values, involving and valuing their employees to focus on improvement and learning from assessments, using smart visual ways to come to a common understanding of goals, able to transfer into practice the essence of its brand to “Be, Think and Innovate”.

Many things have changed since, 10 years ago, the Grundfos A/S top management decided to introduce Business Excellence as a management model in the improvement process undertaken in the company. Factories and departments have improved their knowledge sharing, employees make more suggestions for improvements, and both customers and employees experience a greater level of satisfaction. According to General Manager Lars Aagaard, this is above all due to a whole-hearted commitment at all levels of management and involvement of all employees.

"All employees contribute to setting targets, identifying areas for improvement and evaluating our processes," explains Lars Aagaard. He continues: "Our common understanding and a common frame of reference have served as the foundation for creating improvements in the company

- for the benefit of our competitiveness and our ability to retain a major part of our production in Denmark."

According to Group President and CEO Jens Jørgen Madsen, Business Excellence in Grundfos A/S has a major influence on activities in the entire organisation – especially the other manufacturing companies.

"The fact that Grundfos A/S has a professional approach to profitable production and distribution benefits the entire Group – especially in relation to products and components that can only be produced with in-depth knowledge. At the same time, the company's active involvement in product and technology development provide significant support for the globalisation activities.

I regard Grundfos A/S as a catalyst for the Group's position as a permanent market leader. It is for this reason that we have focused on developing Grundfos A/S into a world-class company," says Jens Jørgen Madsen.

The Group President and CEO acknowledges the great efforts made by management and employees in order to make the Group's biggest manufacturing company deserve the prize.

"Grundfos A/S serves a model for all other manufacturing companies in the Group and by winning these distinguished prizes it has once again led the way. This is a triumph for every single employee," says Jens Jørgen Madsen.

About Grundfos A/S

The Danish manufacturing company Grundfos A/S is the biggest and oldest company in the pump group – established in 1945 by Poul Due Jensen. Together with the Group's headquarters it is located in Denmark, employs 4,000 people and had a turnover of EUR 573 million in 2005.

Grundfos A/S primarily manufactures circulation pumps for heating and air-conditioning plants, industrial centrifugal pumps, submersible pumps for water supply and electronics.

About Grundfos Group

The Grundfos Group has 14,500 employees. In 2005, the Group had a turnover of EUR 1.8 billion.

With its 73 companies, the Grundfos Group is represented in 41 countries worldwide. In addition, Grundfos products are available from local distributors in a large number of countries.