EOQ Press Release
Mr. Eric Wolff, winner of the 2019 EOQ European Quality Leader Award
The European Organization for Quality (EOQ) celebrated on January 12th, 2021, the winner of the European Quality Leader Award 2019.
The European Quality Leader (EQL) Award is granted annually by EOQ. EOQ ‘Quality Leaders’ are individuals who have succeeded in guiding their organizations to success for the different stakeholders through their leadership and through the change and quality improvement processes, in the broadest sense, which they have implemented directly through their teams.
The EQL Award winner for 2019 is Mr. Eric Wolff from France, acting as Corporate Senior Vice President Quality and Environment, Health & Safety at L’Oreal since 2011. Mr. Wolff was selected as the winner of the 2019 EQL award due to his significant and exceptional achievements during the last 10 years in developing a unique, global quality management system covering each step of the product manufacturing process, from development to market distribution and including the sourcing of raw materials and packaging as well as production at the factory.. His moto: to be committed to providing consumers with the most innovative, efficient and reliable solutions across a wide range of high-quality products and services. His continuous improvement approach has brought us high recognition for efficiency while yielding a low rate of consumer complaints. Thus, in 2019, only 47 complaints were registered and processed by L’Oréal per million products sold (7 billion L’Oréal products were sold worldwide in 2019).
After acquiring his engineer degree in food industry and PhD in Chemical Engineering in 1998, Mr. Wolff developed an extensive experience working as engineer in beauty/cosmetic sector by various leading functions at L’Oréal, like CPO Corporate Raw Material Purchasing, VP Plant manager in Montreal plant (Canada), VP Quality for the Americas zone (based in the USA) or Quality Director in Libramont plant (Belgium).
His greatest achievements consist of several managerial actions like:
- Creation of a company entity grouping coherently the best experts in Quality, Environment, Health & Safety and Production Performance,
- Consolidation at group level of information relating to the perception of quality of consumers,
- Extension of Quality management systems from industrial sites (Manufacturing) to Distribution Centers (Supply chain) and Design Centers (R&D)
- In 2019, creation of a TECH incubator @ L’Oréal, at Aulnay-sous-bois (France), called Make Your Technology (MYT) and dedicated to its employees of Europe Middle East Africa on the themes of Quality and operational excellence applied to manufacturing and supply chain for plants and distribution centers
Referring to one of his main success story, the creation of “MYT-, Mr. Wolff stated “We want to find solutions in a more agile, faster, more effective way to problems at the heart of our challenges. We want also through this way of working, to forge a culture of doers, of intrapreneurs – the people who come to work at the MYT are called “makers” – who will encourage our employees to innovate their workspace by themselves, using the industry 4.0 tools and methods they have seen and experienced here”.
Mr. Eric Wolff was co-authoring the book WCOM (World Class Operations Management) with the chapter “L’Oréal Case”. He received several personal recognitions like the Prize for Operational Excellence in the “Large companies” category from the MEDEF/France Qualité in 2017 and the Trophy Leader Quality awarded by the AFQP (France Qualité) in 2019.
EOQ President Torolf Paulshus awarded Mr. Wolff the 2019 European Quality Leader trophy and diploma during the online awarding session of January 12th, 2021.
The European Quality Leader Award recognizes outstanding individuals who devote their time, energy and knowledge by sharing their beliefs for the benefit of the European Society. The European Organization for Quality (EOQ) includes more than 70,000 members and 500,000 companies within its member and partner organizations in Europe and worldwide. EOQ is an interdisciplinary European organization that strives to promote effective improvement in the sphere of quality management as the coordinating body and catalyst of its Member Organizations, with the goal of improving European society by promoting quality in its broadest sense.
January 2021
If you would like more information about this topic, e-mail EOQ Secretary General, Mr. Ulf Gustavsson: eoq@eoq.org
EUROPEAN ORGANIZATION FOR QUALITY, EOQ
e-mail: eoq@eoq.org www.eoq.org
