Commonwealth NGO Mentors Drilled On Quality Assurance & Control

Cameroon Commonwealth NGO Mentors Drilled on Quality Assurance & Control
By James Achanyi-Fontem, Cameroon Link
The chance of Business Sustainability can ONLY ever be maximized through endeavoring to incubate and live Quality Assurance (QA) and Control.. The observation was made by Prof. Sama Nwana of TMG Foundation UK during a lecture for Fine Forest Foundation Cameroon NGO Mentorship on sustainable management in London.
Speaking on Quality Assurance, Prof. Sama Nwana, said this refers to planned and systematic production processes that provide confidence in a product’s suitability for its intended purpose. Quality Assurance is a set of activities intended to ensure that products satisfy customer requirements in a systematic, reliable fashion. He added, however, that QA cannot absolutely guarantee the production of quality products, but makes this more likely.
Prof. Sama Nwana went on to say, that two key principles characterise QA, which are “fit for purpose” and “right first time”. Fit for purpose simply means that the product should be suitable for the intended purpose, while right first time means, mistakes should be eliminated from the start. QA includes regulation of the quality of raw materials, assemblies, products and components, services related to production, and management, production and inspection processes.
The professor emphasized on the fact that quality is a concern because it gives competitive advantage, encourages return purchase, provides customer with information and builds consumer confidence in the brand. On the other hand, it reduces cost incurred in solving post sales problems, while helping to improve on efficiency.
In brief, quality covers reliability, safety, after sales care, customer care and satisfaction, durability, production wastage and returns. Quality Assurance guarantees codes of practice, customer requirements, focus groups, accessibility, regulation compliance, external agency regulation and benchmarking.
According to Wikipedia, quality control and quality engineering are involved in developing systems to ensure products or services designed and produced to meet or exceed customer requirements. These systems are often developed in conjunction with other business and engineering discipines using a cross-functional approach.
It guarantees the responsibility of every member of the workforce for the quality of products and services provided by the business. It puts emphasis on reducing defects before it gets to the final stage of production and certainly to the consumer.
Total Quality Management is the name attributed to Quality Control. To achieve this, quality circles must be conceived, where meetings of relevant workers to discuss issues relating to maintenance and improvement of quality in the business are discussed. These meetings may also double as a form of empowerment and motivation.
There is also a statistical process control, where by statistical data generated to inform the evaluation of processes within the business is confirmed and this is linked to the zero defects. Zero defects are systems in place to ensure that no product leaves the business with a defect, and this is important in building supplier relationships, image and reputation.
In the business world, external agency regulation comes into play. These are international standardization organizations (ISO0 to ensure compatibility, quality and conformity. ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 for example, set standards on quality and the environment.
Consumers Associations produce the magazine “Which” that provides a survey to inform consumers about quality and value for money of competing products. In Britain, the British Standard Institution (BSI) - The Kitemark and the CE mark are both important standards of quality. The CE mark confirms the product meets European Union, EU, directives.
Other external agency regulators are the trade association and the health and safety executive. The trade association draws up codes of practice for its members to adhere to and membership of such an association is an indication of quality. The health and safety executive is responsible for health and safety in the workplace.
The Commonwealth NGO Mentorship aims at ensuring qualiy trainee training and this is seen as a ISO-like system to ensure the courses are “fit for purpose” and ‘right first time”, Prof> Sama Nwana concluded. At the end of the course, the question is whether the trainees can business plan, understand the core modules of budgeting and fundraising, book keeping, project management, etc.
The trainee on their return to their country should be able to demonstrate the skills learnt in a “realistic” or “real” world task. It should be recalled at each moment that, ethic, laws, legislation, regulation and self reflection are the key words for business success. Click on the connection to return to http://cameroonlink.blogspot.com/