BizEx Consulting to conduct seminars

BizEx Consulting, a newly formed consultancy company, will conduct seminars on productivity and Japanese management techniques. The first two seminars will be on June 20 and 21 at the Postgraduate Institute of Management. The presenter will be Sunil G Wijesinha.

"Sri Lanka is fast losing competitiveness of its traditional industries and services. Two basic approaches are being implemented by companies; upgrading of the product or service to a higher quality with more advanced technology and improving labour, material and energy productivity," a spokesman for the company said.

While the US and Europe has had a productivity focus for more than a century, Asian countries lagged behind in productivity. It was for this reason that Japan, in 1960, proposed the formation of the inter-governmental Asian Productivity Organisation (APO) to help member countries improve productivity and thereby the standard of living.

Japan had a productivity and quality improvement drive from the 1950s while Singapore and Malaysia launched special productivity initiatives in the early 1980s.

"However, Sri Lanka's productivity promotion was lukewarm at most, firstly because of the closed economy then followed by the success of the opening of the economy even without high efficiency and productivity," he said.