SLAAQP hosts National Convention on Quality and Productivity in March

The Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Quality Productivity (SLAAQP) will hold its National Convention (NCQP 2012) on 23 and 24 March.

This event is being organised after a lapse of a few years. The convention which will be held at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute (SLFI), 100, Independence Square, Colombo 7, will consist of the following activities:

Technical Paper presentations on how companies or other organisations made significant improvements in quality, productivity and business/service results. The speakers will include CEOs/Directors who have given leadership to achieve excellent results and win awards, as well as Managers who have implemented modern techniques such as lean management, six sigma, 5S, TPM, TQM etc and achieved significant results. There will be eight paper presentations.

Quality Circle presentations and competition (where Quality Circles of organisations will make presentations based on a prescribed format and evaluated by a panel of judges). There will be 18 QCC presentations.

Kaizen competition (where organisations will submit up to six of the best Kaizen suggestions submitted by non-executive employees and implemented)

Poster competition (where the organisation will submit up to six posters drawn by their employees)

Slogan Competition (where Companies/Organisations could submit up to 10 quality/ productivity related slogans created by their non-executive employees)

Keynote speech by a leader who has achieved a turnaround

The event is organised as a contribution of the Association to the improvement of Sri Lanka’s competitiveness. Improving quality and productivity on a national scale will deliver many benefits including better quality and higher reliability, improving competitiveness, reducing costs of production and service, thereby reducing the cost of living, and the improving service quality. In many countries including Japan voluntary and Non-Governmental Organisations similar to the SLAAQP have made important contributions to the development of quality and productivity.

The SLAAQP is a member of the Co-ordination Committee of the International Convention on QC Circles. Quality Circles or QC Circles is a concept that originated in Japan to involve non-executive employees to use a prescribed methodology (after being trained in problem solving tools) to tackle quality and productivity issues. The concept first spread throughout Japan in the 1960s and then spread to service industries, then to South Korea and Taiwan and by 1980 it was a worldwide phenomenon. Even today the concept is very popular judging by the participation of over a thousand delegates at the Internal Convention.

Kaizen too is a method which originated in Japan and is credited as being a major factor that improved the competitiveness of Japanese industry. Today both QC Circles as well as Kaizen is popular in many organisations including government organisations.

SLAAQP believes that the non-executive workers in the country have tremendous enthusiasm and knowledge and can make a significant contribution to the country. This convention is the only national convention in Sri Lanka that provides an opportunity for such non-executive employees to demonstrate their skills.

Speakers for the technical papers will be announced in due course. Companies and organisations that are interested in entering their Quality Circles for presentation/competition and submit posters, Slogans and Kaizen Suggestions could download the forms from the SLAAQP website www.slaaqp.org.or call National Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka , which is the secretariat of the SLAAQP, on tel; 0114741788 (Thushari) and request  application forms. While the forms are free of charge there is an application fee for the company/organisation. Application forms for delegates who wish to attend both days will be available shortly. Delegates who wish to attend only the second day where the Quality Circle Presentation will be held, will have an admission fee in two tiers. These details will be available shortly.

The Award Ceremony will take place in the evening of 24 March under the patronage of the Chief Guest Minister of Productivity and Promotion Lakshman Seneviratna. The awards for Quality Circles will include best overall presentation, best use of analytical tools, best tangible results, best intangible results, and best presentation format, etc.

In the current context where Sri Lanka is being positioned to take a major role in the global market place, a higher orientation towards quality and productivity would be a great asset.