MILWAUKEE-The American Society for Quality's (ASQ) Annual Quality Congress will feature, for the first time, a "quality competition." The Association for Quality and Participation (AQP) will present the National Team Excellence Awards during this year's Annual Quality Congress in Toronto, May 24 to 26.

The team excellence process promotes business effectiveness through team-based management and encourages individuals, teams and organizations to excel in quality through participation practices. The process provides teams the opportunity to demonstrate their abilities to solve problems and successfully implement improvement projects, receiving feedback from impartial judges. The competition combines the application of continuous improvement tools,

problem-solving processes, team dynamics, project management and communication skills to generate significant performance improvements within an organization.

In addition to providing national and international recognition for teams that participate in the award competition process, the association says that the Team Excellence Award criteria also are used by many organizations for self-

assessment and to improve internal process improvement and team problem-solving efforts.

To date, the AQP International Team Excellence Award Compe-tition has had more than 700 teams vying to win since its inception in 1985. 2003 team finalists collectively saved more than $19 million for their companies.

At ASQ's Annual Quality Congress in Toronto, attendees can watch the team's compete live. Judging will take place May 24 to 25. The awards will be presented May 26.

The 2003-04 Team Excellence criteria and guidelines are available by calling (800) 733-3310 x7303 or visiting www.aqp.org.