Sri Lanka to host ICQCC in 2014
Sri Lanka's bid to host the International Convention of Quality
Control Circles(ICQCC) in 2014 was accepted unanimously by the Internal
Co-ordinating Committee at a meeting in Hyderabad.
The meeting was held concurrently with the ICQCC 2010 held in
Hyderabad in October and hosted by the Quality Circle Forum of India.
Sri Lanka was represented by Sunil G Wijesinha, a former President of
the Sri Lanka Association for the Promotion of Quality and Productivity,
the organisation that co-ordinates QC Circle activities in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka last hosted the ICQCC in 1998, at which over a hundred
foreign delegates participated. Now with a peaceful environment
prevailing in the country there was considerable interest and commitment
from member countries to bring large delegations to the convention.
India hopes to bring over 200 delegates.
The ICQCC has a long history, with the birth of Quality Circles in
Japan in the 1960s. Quality Circles is a management concept that enables
factory workers to study systematic problem solving methods that
encouraged them to form into small groups that followed a methodical
procedure to identify, analyse, find root causes of defects and quality
problems, and implement solutions.
The workers were trained to use simple QC tools such as Pareto chart
and Cause and Effect Diagrams, and sometimes more advanced tools such as
Control Charts. QC circles started in many factories in Japan and began
making significant strides in quality improvement.
Japanese goods quickly changed its image from being "cheap and
shoddy" to "world's best".
The philosophy of the Japanese was that it was a waste to only use
the hands of the Japanese, leaving the potential in their brains
unutilized.
Quality Circles utilize the knowledge and experience of workers while
their lack of an academic orientation is remedied with special training
in QC tools, and a procedure called "the QC story".
The success of QC Circles in manufacturing activities in Japan led to
the concept spreading to service areas of the company and then onto
other service enterprises too.
The concept of QC Circles and the Kaizen concept are two Japanese
methods which use the brains, intimate work knowledge, and experience of
workers, and are widely regarded as techniques that made Japanese more
competitive and reliable.
Initially, the concept was mainly popular in Japan, Korea and Taiwan,
and as a measure of exchanging experience a conference was organised in
Korea in 1976.
The annual conference revolved around these three countries until
1984 when it was moved to Manila and in 1987 to Bangkok.
Now there are 12 countries in the group and each country takes a
turn. Sri Lanka was admitted in 1989.
Wijesinha as the then President of the newly formed Quality Circle
Association of Sri Lanka attended the ICQCC 1989 in New Delhi, and made
a claim for admission. The first Sri Lankan to present a paper at an
ICQCC was Wijesinha, who presented a paper at the ICQCC in 1987 and made
contact with the Quality Circle Forum of India which assisted him to
form the local body.
At the recent Hyderabad convention there were over 2,900 participants
including over 550 foreign participants. The largest delegation was from
Malaysia with 149 participants and Thailand 110.
There were 440 team/circle presentations and nine paper presentations
conducted in fifteen concurrent sessions at the state-of-the-art
Hyderabad International Convention Centre.
Quality Circles became popular worldwide in the early 1980s and many
predicted that as usual this too would fade away after peaking in
popularity.
Anyone attending the Hyderabad convention would have been convinced
that unlike other management fads, quality circles are growing in
popularity even after 50 years of its birth, unlike most other
management fads.
Sri Lanka has had ups and downs in Quality Circle popularity. The
biggest delegation from Sri Lanka was at the Bangkok convention in 1993
when 60 delegates from Sri Lanka attended with several circles from
companies making presentations. At Hyderabad there were six delegates
from Sri Lanka, with two presentations from Sri Lanka Telecom. Several
Sri Lanka schools too had QC Circles and have participated in the
International School QC Circle Conventions.
The National Productivity Secretariat of the Ministry of Labour and
Productivity Promotion recently conducted a very successful QC Circle
convention. The SLAAQP too intends to further popularise the concept and
conduct many activities culminating in the ICQCC in 2014.
The next ICQCC will be held in Yokohama in September 2011 hosted by
the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers. Malaysia will host 2012
and Taipei 2013.
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