Ghana Standards Authority calls on Industries to embrace quality culture

Professor Alex Dodoo, Director-General, Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) has called on industries to embrace the good quality culture, to ensure the quality of products and services.

He said quality culture, which constituted the belief and behaviours of an organisation that defined and enabled excellence of their operations, products and services, was the basis of any quality improvement.

He noted that unfortunately, quality culture as a mindset did not form part of the cultures in most of these organisations, as some might have not understood the critical importance of quality culture in global competitiveness, quality of products and services.

Prof Dodoo made these remarks in his address at a seminar, organised by the School of Graduate Studies of the University of Professional Studies (UPSA).

The seminar was on the theme: “The Role of Leaders in Building Trust-Based Quality Culture”.

It was in line with the commemoration of the World Quality Day, aimed at creating awareness on issues of Quality Management.

Prof Dodoo said, over the years, they have seen a lot of made in Ghana goods rejected in Europe and other international markets due to poor quality of these goods; and the root cause of this problem he said was the lack of quality culture in many of the industries.

He said Ghana could not take advantage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), because goods produced in the country did not meet the requirements of the applicable standards and requirements in the importing countries.

Prof Dodoo, hinted that quality culture must start with leadership that understands and believe the implications of the systems view and knows the necessity of serving customers in order to succeed.

He said leaders must provide guidance within the organisation and should communicate effectively to all employees that quality issues were not only the responsibility of the quality control unit, and that product quality and operational excellence were owned by every employee.

He said quality culture, must be demonstrated by the actions of those in leadership and not relegated to a few finely framed posters strategically positioned above workspaces.

“Indeed, senior executives who fail to comprehend the need to change, who fail to create a sense of urgency when needed and who fail to follow through the changes they initiated, are poor candidates to lead an organisation through a major culture change” he added.

Prod Dodoo explained that in that regard, the surest way to inculcate quality culture in the workplace was to install and implement ISO Management Systems Standards.

He said GSA being the National Statutory Body in charge of standardisation, conformity assessment and metrology, had worked tirelessly to promote the quality culture and had received international accreditation to certify organisations in the country to some of these management standards.

Mr Joseph Gerald Nyanyofio, Coordinator, Masters in Business Administration (MBA) Total Quality Management Programmes at the UPSA, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, also highlighted on the need to embrace the system of quality to promote a broader agenda of national development.

He said development in many developing countries had been elusive simply because of the low appreciation of quality.

"Quality is not only what we find in books, but it should be a way of life," he stated.