Dear Executives and Business Leaders:

On December 7th of 2010 European Union President Herman Van Rompuy and European Community President Jose Manuel Baroso announced that the Russian Federation and the European Union have reached a trade agreement which paves the way for accession of Russia to WTO membership as early as next year. Endorsement for WTO membership had previously been announced by the United States in October. Thus, after 17 years of negotiation, it appears Russia will imminently achieve this milestone.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a forum for governments to develop trade rules, negotiate trade agreements, and settle disputes by sorting out problems that governments face. The WTO agreements which are negotiated and agreed among governments provide the legal ground rules for international commerce. These agreements have the goal of helping the producers of goods and services to conduct their business while allowing governments to meet their social and environmental objectives. It is the fundamental purpose of this system to encourage the free flow of trade and eliminate undesirable side effects to encourage economic development and well‐being by removing obstacles.

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Dear CEO and General Directors of all Companies Worldwide!

Many of you have been already working within the frames of World Trading Organization for many years and you have already understood how it is important to be competitive on international market on the one hand and what does social responsibility mean on the other.

Russia is now on the eve of joining World Trade Organization (WTO) as well!

Russia Organization for Quality (ROQ) has already announced it’s approach in international quality congresses where we have already stressed several times that world can survive only when civilization development would have a harmony between culture of business production and culture of human consumption, when the following challenges will be resolved:

1. Profit of any businesses is not to be considered as a creation of added value for companies only developing their business and getting more&more money by their owners and shareholders;
2. Profit of companies should generate added value for ordinary people as well;
3. Tangible added value for society should base on value added produced by business;
4. Balance between profit for companies and benefit for people is safety mechanism of our civilization;
5. Social responsibility should be considered as a compulsory philosophy solution for coexisting business and society; Thus all of business worldwide is to be responsible for the future of our civilization.

Basing on the above mentioned that is why Russia Organization for Quality (ROQ), Russian benchmarking club “Business Excellence” together with German company Leadership-Services GbmH and with support of International Academy for Quality (IAQ) have decided to start international benchmarking research project “Strive for Excellence! Operate like Toyota!” The main ideas of this project are the following:

• to provide companies and organizations in all countries with a standard benchmarking tool which will open the mind of all CEO worldwide and let them following these 14 fundamental Toyota principles of success and social responsibility;
• using this benchmarking tool companies and organizations can compare themselves with the high level of business organization standards and start benchmarking themselves between each other including Russia, Egypt, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Philippines, Japan, Slovenia, Croatia, China, USA and many others;
• all results from companies we can allocate in web resources where each company can compare their level with the counterparts and make research and analyses to understand their weak points and work out the directions for improvements;
• the results of the benchmarking research will be practical tool for worldwide process which will help all participants to start their improvements themselves without any delay and extra expenses;
• we can invite international famous experts in quality and business excellence sphere to assist companies to make professional analyses and support companies improvement, that will be done with the assistance from International Academy for Quality;