Quality forum

Quality Forum celebrated World Quality Day on the 2nd Thursday of November (8th Nov 2012) at `Hotel Suba International` at Andheri Mumbai.  The function started at 6.30 evening with Registration and went on for about 3 ½ hours, ending with dinner.  Basudev Bhattacharya, our Secretary welcomed the Speakers, members and invitees and briefed them about the significance of the World Quality Day.  Prakash Bhave, our Chairman introduced the Speakers and conducted the seminar comprising presentation of three speakers.  Manoj Karkhanis, our Jt. Secretary proposed a vote of thanks to all concerned.  Besides Quality Forum members, eminent persons from the Quality profession graced this occasion as invitees.

A perspective on ‘Quality and Competitiveness’ in 3 sectors i.e. Industry, Healthcare and Education was provided on this occasion by the speakers.  A brief overview of the talks is given below.

1.    Dr P. Thavamani, Director - Indian Rubber Manufacturers Research Association (IRMRA) spoke on quality for competitiveness and consumer protection in the Rubber industry.

The rubber industry in India contributes Rs 50,000 Crores worth of products.  It also provides employment to 5,00,000 persons.  Since most of the consumption is in transport sector, quality of products has a direct impact on safety of the users.  Tyres and tubes have a critical role in vehicle safety.  Maruti recalled some 50,000 vehicles earlier due to quality problems on components in vehicles.  Thus quality has a bearing on the profitability.  The case of the "O" Ring failure in Challenger during take-off, leading to the catastrophic failure during descent is well documented. The IRMRA has played an important role in quality improvement by enforcing the quality control order on tyres and tubes.  Its efforts have ensured the availability of quality requirement complied tyres and tubes in the Indian market.  Dr Thavamani emphasized that being small is not more detrimental in achieving excellence.  It actually provides agility to dynamically respond in the market place.


2.    Dr Nikhil D Datar, a leading Gynecologist of Mumbai and founder of the initiative -`Patient Safety Alliance` - spoke on how the patient communications can be improved to play a major role in better health care.  He elaborated the importance of Doctors adequately informing the patient regarding the treatment procedures prior to obtaining his consent.  He showed that audio visual media can be used to efficiently educate the patient and reduce communication gap.  He stated that in a Harvard Medical Practices Study the overall proportion of adverse outcomes was found to be about 3.7%  and only 1.0% of these could be ascribed to individual doctor`s negligence and rest were due to systemic issues.  Thus there is a vast scope to reduce adverse outcomes by systems and communication improvement.  The `Patient Safety Alliance’ mooted by UNESCO and initiated by Dr Datar in Mumbai is an important step in this direction. (link- www.patientsafetyalliance.in)


3    Ms. Sangeeta Gole, a well known school accreditation trainer and assessor of QCI, spoke on the importance of quality in offering better education in the School system.
She surveyed the current scenario in school education.  UNESCO has identified the four pillars of school education as

i)    learning to know,
ii)   learning to do,
iii)  learning to be
iv)  learning to live together

For a school education to be effective, it has to cater to these four aspects and result into the holistic development of the child.  She stressed the need to have a strong HR and also a teaching R&D cell in a school.  This will be necessary to keep the teachers trained and abreast on the current pedagogy techniques and curriculum developments.  The role played by the Accreditation schemes of QCI in improving the system of school governance was also explained.  It was noted that if teaching system is inadequate, the defective product, in this case the students, cannot be recalled to set right the defect unlike an industrial product and a good education system has far reaching benefits for the individual as well as the society.  Ms Sangeeta Gole also touched on various aspects in school governance such as different boards, private and aided schools, attitudinal issues of stakeholders, role of RTE etc.  She finally made an appeal to all the stake holders to come together and strive in the interest of better education to the children.

All the three talks generated tremendous interaction among the participants (numbering 50) that continued well over dinner.  This year, the expense for the WQD function was met from donations of 10 members, through their individual as well as organizations contribution.

Pictures of the WQD Day 2012 can be viewed online at this gallery :

QF_WQD_2012