Standard of management matters more than quality of products

LAHORE: Merely setting quality standards of products produced in the country would not serve Pakistan’s economic interests, the regulators would have to ensure best management practices to ensure sustained product quality.

Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA) has notified the minimum standard of each product and equipment produced in Pakistan. Quality production is dependent on management quality standards that have been neglected by our economic planners. The big corporate sector or a few leading exporters did get their management practices certified by globally accredited quality standard companies.

The ISO 9000 and above certifications are granted after thorough audit by the ISO certified auditors. These certifications take into account all management practices starting with recruitment, procurement, and finances to all the processes that a product passes through before completion.

The companies desirous of getting certified have to follow the best management practices developed and tested over years by the certifying company. If these practices are followed, it not only ensures the quality of the product but also minimises the cost. Quality management, to inefficient producers, looks costly involving many checks, which in their opinion could be overlooked.

However, they fail to appreciate the companies, duly certified by the quality rating agency, manufacture better products at lower cost than those that do not follow the procedures.

Unfortunately there is no national agency that has the authority to set minimum standards of what type of equipment can be used in production and what measures should be taken to ensure quality and lower cost. Entrepreneurs still import ten-year-old secondhand machines to install in their plants.

With the current cut-throat advancement in technology, even five-year-old machines become obsolete. The protection provided to the local industry in the form of subsidies, zero-rating, and other concessions helps it survive in domestic market for a while but sooner or later they are booted out by efficient foreign producers.

Management quality standards adopted the world over through certification by accredited industries are being followed by the big corporate sector in Pakistan but the small and medium enterprises are still staying away paying heavy price due to inefficiencies.

The small and medium industries stay away from these certifications because they cannot afford the fat fee of the auditors.

These certifications are being provided in the country for the last two decades. There are many experts that know the procedures and guide the small and medium industries to attain efficiencies through best management practices. It is the duty of the state to establish a certifying institution with full transparency and accountability that should certify all manufacturers investing a minimum of Rs5 million in the manufacturing sector.

In fact it should be made mandatory to take this certificate so that we start producing things efficiently. They may not get the foreign certification but their procedures and management style would be similar to that of best quality certification agencies. Efficiency is the major factor that has kept the export growth in check.

The rules regulations and procedures of the quality management and production certifications were devised after intense global research. Adopting these procedures ensures better use of human resource, higher energy efficiencies, and lower wastages, and improved competitiveness of the products and services.

The first sector to improve its management and production standard was the textile sector particularly apparel and home textiles. This is the reason that even when the basic textiles exports were going down the apparel sector imports registered increase, while the home textiles tolerated global recession better.

However, the reluctance of some SMEs to fully abide by the global certification rules forced global retail chains to impose their own corporate social responsibility, environmental, and management standards. Now they send their own audit teams that conduct stringent audits at the expense of the exporting firms.

The non-exporting firms simply ignore quality standards, procedures, environmental safety and corporate social responsibility because there is no agency to regulate these standards.