Dr. Manu Vora
The Asia Pacific Quality Organization (APQO) has selected IIT alumnus 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. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Illinois Tech, and a 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 given more than 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 more than 50 articlesin professional journals and conference proceedings. In 2005, he authored “Managing Human Capital” chapter in the book Six Sigma for Transactions and Service, published by McGraw-Hill.
Dr. Vora has made significant contributions to social responsibility and community service areas. For more than 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 U.S. and India. He is affiliated with more than 33 educational institutions around the globe.
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 more than 15 million visually impaired people in India., raising more than $3.5 million to date. Since 1970, he has raised over $8 million for a variety of charitable and professional causes.