Tuesday May 07, 2024
Tuesday May 07, 2024
Wednesday, 1 March 2017 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Sri Lanka Federation for Quality and Productivity (SLFQP) is a very recently established body with a vision of ‘Bringing a new era for Sri Lanka through a new quality to culture for Sri Lanka to take the country forward’. Expecting to be the apex body in Sri Lanka, it will organise a mechanism to take the country through the promotion of principles of quality, which is long overdue.
SLFQP will use a two prong approach; one ‘that will be established by the Federation’ and the second through ‘influencing the affiliated bodies both in the private and state sectors to believe in quality and accept quality as tool for taking the organisations and the whole country forward’.
It is noted that Sri Lanka after independence is now at the lowest possible levels economically, morally and ethically, with a fair number of criminals and thieves, taking on the prominence of the citizens who try to lead decent lives and respect the other people, but the trend seems to be to overrun the decent citizens by thugs and outlaws mentioned above.
Quality could bring in ‘honesty, integrity, respects others’ as these are some of the quality parameters of an individual, or simply as ‘quality of an individual’, and this ‘change must be brought’ in starting from now onwards.
While understanding the ‘change’ is one of the difficult achievements, taking a small step at grass root level will be the challenge the federation is ready to take. To move on this route the federation will move both-ways, up and down.
Moving up process Federation will propose ‘National Quality Policy’ (NQP) to the cabinet of the Sri Lanka Government, and with their blessings submit to President of the Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, Maithripala Sirisena, to issue as the NQP for Sri Lanka.
National policies on Health, Education, Transport, Agriculture and Plantations, Industrial, Fisheries, etc. will be forwarded to approval at the highest level.
These will be followed up with agreeing on objectives and targets with finishing lines, and action plans to achieve these targets.
This is an insight to the Federation’s Modus Operandi and with time expecting all responsible citizens to understand the vision of the Federation and join hands, ‘to bring up the change’.
This is a network proposed by the Federation through the formation of provincial level quality associations, district level quality 
associations and school quality societies (SQS) in the districts.
This ‘Quality Chain’ will be built on the spirit of ‘Team-Work’, and will focus for better future for all Sri Lankans and make Sri Lanka a better place to live in.In this process there will be a minimum of 34 new associations (9 provincial and 25 district) and 500 SQSs within one year on the launch. Federation will encourage more District Associations (DAs) and SQSs and within three years the target will be to increase the District Associations to 50 and SQSs to 2000, with one school having more than one society.
The ‘Junior Quality Manager’ the quarterly magazine to be issued by the Federation will be the ‘Voice of Quality’ for school children, with contributions on quality related subjects, which will entitle them to District, Provincial and National level awards as recognition for the articles they subscribe to the JQM.
The Federation had already initiated work on the aspect with the Publishing Department of the Ministry of Education with funds coming possibly with the courtesy of GIZ. In the process the JQM will carry news, feature articles on quality, achievements at national and international level with regard to promotion of quality at these levels.
This will be the second line of operation and for start on this the Federation is offering the ‘affiliate ships’ for organisations in all sectors, education, judiciary, health, agriculture, livestock, forestry, environment etc., of the economy free of charge.
Once they accept the Federation offer, they will be awarded the affiliate ship, and many programs by national and international experts will be conducted to again move for at least a marginal change in their approaches. The Federation believes in around 50% responses within the next few years.
Of course these changes are measurable from their achievements, and this will motivate the others also to follow suit.
Late President John Kennedy addressing the nation moon mission of 1961, postulated “that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth”. President Kennedy’s proclamation was on 25 May 1961, but given the odds, such a bold commitment was, at that time, outrageous. But that’s part of what made it such a powerful mechanism for getting the United States, still groggy from the 1950s and the Eisenhower era, after the Vietnam War, to begin to move vigorously. John F. Kennedy died in 1963, and he was no longer to inspire or to ‘lead’ to the moon mission, but the mission did not become less inspiring, and this national mission, was not abandoned, and whatever happened to John Kennedy, Neil Armstrong landed on the moon with Richard Nixon in office and not John F. Kennedy, indicating the ‘goal itself became the motivating mechanism’, even without the charismatic leadership of Kennedy.
We need may not have a charismatic leadership like John Kennedy, but a mission to motivate the nation could take the country to meet the impossible.
Turning the searchlight to Sri Lanka, the ‘repayment of foreign debts and to basic imports such as pharmaceuticals and other essentials’, the combination of both will be the overall target; ‘do we have a target to settle these debts, without a target it is not possible to develop an action’, what is a more sensible approach will be for ‘all to agree, all to have a target settling the entire amount of the debts by 2025’, and this will require all sectors to have their own targets all to have their own targets to export and earn exchange and the total should meet the required exchange to pay the debts. A momentum should be generated for this ‘national program to recover from all debts’.
This program will bring some unhappiness to a few but happiness to the majority, and support this program which should end by 2025.
As the first step, Sri Lanka must identify potential areas to address in the national economy. This in addition to what is already in operation such as Sri Lanka Customs, Excise Department and Inland Revenue.
The potential areas could be fisheries, plantations, agriculture (export crops), garments, gems, tourism, overseas employment (skilled male workers), while potential areas for savings are cutting down on luxuries till 2025 (expensive motor vehicles), reduced imports of petroleum, through reduction in energy consumption.
Potential areas for heavy investments will be livestock and may be national livestock.
Development Board (NLDB) with heavy investments on imports of high yielding cows, instead of milk powder, which suits the climate of the areas where there is ample land available, increased milk production by 200% within three years, will minimise imports of milk powder, and also increased production of compost could be used in paddy and other cultivations, with urea produced by the animals used as source of urea, could help in increasing the production of specially paddy. If adequately planned and developed this is an area exports become possible.
This should be a package to acquire the resources, which includes hardware such as releasing of suitable land, supply of water, machinery, and software such as technology, animal health (veterinarians) and regulations required, so that this will become the number one industry in the country.
A situation will arise that with the increased compost manufacture the imports of fertiliser could be saved and also better yields from paddy and other crops.
Similarly, reactivating the cement production in KKS plant could reduce cement imports and that will result in savings. There must be an action plan to initiate production and also target for savings.
This will be the national plan to pay debts, and each sector should increase earnings by fisheries X%, plantations y%, agriculture Z% etc., and each sector should have an action plan to increase the earnings through increased production so the totalled all increases and the savings together should be able to pay all debts.
This total commitment from all will meet the final goal even before 2025. This is not an unrealistic situation as fisheries, plantations, agriculture etc. could easily perform more than what is brought in right now. Fisheries increased farming e.g. Shrimp farming on the East Coast, increase the shrimp supply to 40 000 MT/year, from the current level of 10 000 MT/year, develop industries to recover chitin from shrimp waste and further develop these waste based industries, deep sea fishing using trawlers through joint ventures and value addition of exports possibly with joint ventures, plantations with quality assurance (QA) programs and direct sales, export agriculture through value addition similarly the progress of each sector must be reviewed, and any short falls corrective and preventive action to be taken in advance.
For this approach to work the President and the Prime Minister should monitor the achievements, with the Minister responsible and the senior officials in the Ministry and associated agencies, who participated in the target and action plan development.
The level of achievements should be made known to all parliamentarians and to the public, so that all could contribute positively. This will lead to the commitment from all and the example must be set by the top.
These are two model cases to demonstrate the quality approach for setting targets, and action plans and monitoring, taking corrective and preventive measures, similarly for targets on savings, and this does not require any further tightening of belts, no further need for any additional medicine; this could lead to adequate momentum provided all demonstrate their commitment, without any exception.
It is expected to increase the production of paddy by 50% by 2030, and having this as the target, increase the paddy production with scientific agriculture, improved irrigations and maintenance of reservoirs, increase fertiliser subsidy and timely distribution as other SE Asian countries seem to use more fertiliser resulting in much higher yields.The production of paddy seems to be affected by bureaucracy, at all support services and further farmers being not so familiar with government regulations and banking procedures the situation must be reviewed from a new angle with the objective of making all farmers to produce as much as possible.
Empowerment of all officers involved, researchers, extension services, bankers, those staff in irrigation, supply of fertiliser, and this ‘change of attitude’ should be able to take paddy farming to a new level.
These are some approaches to increase the national income for debt repayment.
The simple definition of ‘customer’ in quality jargon refers to anybody ‘receiving a product or service’ either externally (External customer) or internally (Internal customer) and the quality is the degree to which the ‘customer’ either ‘internal’ or ‘external’, requirements are met. This is the basics of quality.
This simple equation could bring a complete ‘change in the nation’ and the Sri Lankans have the ability for the ‘change’ and only the ‘Leadership’ will be the requirement.
Can the Federation of Quality bring this change?
The Federation will be built on ‘team work’ and this will provide the strength required to induce the ‘team spirit’ to all in the country. Any successes will be passed on to SARRC countries on the long run.
(The writer was the winner of the Harrington/Ishikawa medal of APQO for his outstanding contribution to promote quality in the Asia and the Pacific Region).
