Tran Ba Phuc, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Tien Phong Plastic Joint Stock Company that won the National Quality Award 2012 and the Global Performance Excellence Award (GPEA) said he was very proud to receive the awards but it is also the responsibility of the company to retain values of the awards.

To receive the awards, Tien Phong Plastic JSC has experienced a stage full of difficulties and challenges. In 2005, after privatization the company has gradually developed to become a leading enterprise of Vietnam's plastic industry. Not only having branches in the three main regions, it has also built a plant in Laos. Phuc stressed "the above awards will be springboards for our strategies to penetrate ASEAN markets with Myanmar and Cambodia are the short term targets".
On the way to its success, Tien Phong Plastic JSC has always promoted cooperation with foreign partners such as Australia, New Zealand and Japan and achieved initial good results. The important thing is that since 2008, it has adopted strategies to undertake intensive investment, innovate technology and improve production capacity. A typical example was the installation and operation of production lines to produce 800mm diameter UPVC pipes worth over US$1 million and 1200mm diameter HDPE pipes.

Another enterprise that won the National Quality Award 2012 was Vietnam Paper Corporation VINAPACO. Deputy General Director of VINAPACO Nguyen Viet Duc said to receive this award, the Corporation has tried to increase its competitiveness in the market and gone through a long striving process and also severe appreciation of the National Quality Award Council.

Duc said distinctive features of Vietnam paper industry are related to the environment, especially exhausted fumes and wastewater. Normally, one ton of paper often discharges about 80 cu.m, which means 20-30 thousand cu.m per day. To tackle the problem, since 2003, VINAPACO made great efforts to invest over VND1 trillion in environmental pollution treatment technology, of which one third was to improve its waste water treatment system to meet national standards for the sector.

In 2010, VINAPACO was awarded with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certificate as a recognition for its sustainable forest management by Smartwood. Duc stressed "Thanks to those efforts and investment, Bai Bang Paper, which accounts for 40 percent of Vietnam's printed paper always has a high competitiveness in the market and already exported to Asian countries".

2012 was the fourth year that the Ministry of Science and Technology was assigned by the Government to organize the National Quality Award, which imitates the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award of the US (MBA). MBA is given to businesses judged to be outstanding in seven areas: leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, information and analysis, human resource focus, process management, and business results. The National Quality Award is regarded as an effective tool to manage and improve the quality of Vietnam's products and services. After taking enterprises' dossiers for examination, 67 outstanding enterprises from 33 cities and provinces have been picked and granted with the National Quality Award 2012, including 17 golden prizes and 50 silver prizes. Also in 2012, three Vietnamese enterprises were presented with the GPEA by the Asia Pacific Quality Organization./.