Quality Council of India
Quality Council of India
As our former president Dr. A. P. J. Abdul kalam himself has stated in one of his speeches, it is the quality that differentiates a developing country from a developed country. With an improvement in quality, a developing country can easily become a developed country. With this vision, the Quality Council of India has been established, to raise the quality and standards in every sphere of life for the betterment of the nation. The council is a non-profit, autonomous body of Department of Industrial Policy and promotion, Government of India, that was established in the year 1997 based on the recommendations given to the cabinet committee in the year 1996.
The objectives of QCI are as follows:
- To empower citizens to demand quality in all spheres of life and also for industries to set a standard for quality in services and products and to maintain those standards.
- To develop guidelines at the level of Industries, governments and institutions to set quality standards and to keep updating them constantly.
- To establish and operate National Accreditation programmes in accordance with the International standards. Also, to carry out regular inspections on laboratories that are involved in testing and calibration.
- To form National Accreditation programmes where there are none and to develop the existing programmes in service sectors such as education, healthcare, environment protection, governance etc.
- To encourage the usage of third-party assessment models even in Government organizations, other organizations and society in general.
- To help the public have easy access to an enquiry on standards and quality through National information and Enquiry services on standards and quality.
- To have an appeal mechanism to tackle unresolved complaints.
Methodology of the Council
The council comprises of 38 members, with equal representation from the Government, Industries and other stakeholders. Currently, MSMEs have the upper hand in the manufacturing sector due to the high rate of exports and employment opportunities being provided by them. Also, they are a valuable part of every industrial sector’s value chain. The quality intervention done by QCI is in three segments. They are:
- Lean manufacturing competitive scheme (LMCS)
- Zero defect zero effect (ZED)
- Business Membership Organizations (BMOs)/Federations/Councils
Lean Manufacturing Competitive Scheme
The aim is to enhance the competitiveness of MSMEs by implementing Lean Manufacturing techniques. For this, some MSMEs are chosen and, a consultant works with particular clusters with the funds provided by the Government. This also aims at cutting off the non-productive elements. So far, this has been implemented upon almost 220 clusters, i.e., 2000 MSME units. Productivity has increased over 20-27% for all the MSMEs that have been involved in this lean cycle for a period of 18 months. While 80% of the funds are received from the Government, the rest 20% of the funds should be managed by the MSMEs that are benefitted from this scheme.
Zero Defect Zero Effect
This is an approach that aims to negate any flaws that may occur during the planning, pre-production, production, maintenance and post-production stages so that, one does not have to wait till the final stage to get the quality checked and rectification of any fault in the product. This is founded on the idea that when the product is well planned and built right from its initial stages and, it is executed perfectly, it will not have any adverse environmental effect hence, making the product sustainable. This system will account for quality, energy efficiency, pollution mitigation, financial status, human resource, technological depth including design and IPR in both products and processes. It, in turn, helps in the holistic, sustainable development of the society.
Business Membership Organizations
It addresses the major obstacles faced by MSMEs such as financial, technical, material related or Human resource related. National accreditation board for education and training (NABET) is operating a national scheme for the accreditation of industry associations or business membership organisations. The aim is to establish a standard organizational competency among BMOs that would, in turn, translate into quality, credibility, accountability and transparency. Such accredited BMOs can avail Government schemes that also includes financial support. It also ensures that these BMOs align with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) as defined by UNO.
Membership to Quality Council
A membership can be availed by:
- Individuals
- Organizations
- Healthcare facility
- Laboratories
- NGOs
- Educational institution
- PSU
Membership registration process:
- Enter the QCI website and click on “About QCI”.
- Select the option “Membership” from the drop-down menu.
- Once the membership page is open, again select the “membership” option given on the page.
- Click on the below-mentioned link that is provided in the access page. http://nbqp.qci.org.in/membership/about-scheme#
- Once registered, the login details are sent to the mail id and associated phone number.
- Use the login details and sign in to the portal with the same credentials.
- Once you log in, the page gets redirected to the user dashboard where you can fill up the membership form or even change the password given for logging in to your account.
- Now you can fill-up the form, make the required payment and submit the request.
- Once the request is verified, the membership id is provided to the applicant within 2-4 days.
Follow this link for registration http://nbqp.qci.org.in/membership/about-scheme#
Other Areas
Quality Council of India also provides the following services as well:
- Consultants – Guiding the quality aspects to the individuals/entrepreneurs/MSMEs
- Auditors – Applying standard procedures in accounting
- Courses – Members can learn with literature available through various courses
Contact details of QCI:
Institution of Engineers Building, IInd Floor,
2 – Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi – 110002, India.
Tel: +91-11- 2337 9321, 2337 8056
Email: [email protected]
