Cultural Aspects of Quality PICQ May 2-3, 2011 Pearl Continental Hotel, Lahore

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Gerald Hancock
5 years ago
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1 Cultural Aspects of Quality PICQ May 2-3, 2011 Pearl Continental Hotel, Lahore Before touching on the cultural aspects of quality on the work floor, I would like to dwell a little bit on the transition of a village society to an urban society. Industry, in general, comes out of a certain level of urbanization and therefore, it is important to understand how societies transition from village societies to urban or cosmopolitan societies. There is a relationship between the culture which a company wants to promote and the national culture in which that company or manufacturing concern exists! The village society is biological in nature. It is a product of a self-healing culture. If a buffalo breaks its horn, the owner of the buffalo either tries to apply some Haldi (Turmeric) on it or he will just wait for the horn to grow. He has no need to repair the horn. Similarly if a branch of a tree breaks, he has no need to repair it; the tree will grow another branch and so on and so forth; in the village society everything is biological and every biological being has some kind of repair mechanism inside it. Even if the goat falls sick, the owner will first try to give it some elementary medicine like ajwain etc and if that does not work, he will slaughter the goat, eat the meat and will wait for another goat to be born. So as you can see there is no need in the village society to have preventive maintenance; to oil some creaking machines or to have a maintenance programme of some kind. The village clock ticks by the nature. Seed has to be sown before the rains and after the rains there is weeding to be done. The farmer does not to work to a normal mechanical clock, or a printed work schedule, like people in industry are supposed to.

2 Every year our metropolitan towns receive several hundred thousand additional residents from surrounding villages, looking for jobs in industries and service sectors. So, it happens that when people from villages start to work suddenly in industries, they have not been prepared to work according to given schedules. Culturally and mentally, they are in a situation where they think that if a certain hinge is creaking, the oil will, probably, come from within its bones and, some times later, it may stop creaking ; but, as you know, in mechanical appliances, this does not happen! All the time one has to be prepared with an oil can to oil a dry hinge; or you have to change a certain filter at a certain time. If you don t do it, some problems will certainly occur! From your car to your machine, urban life is vastly different from what people are used to in villages. Moving from the village to urban society and from there to the culture of a factory floor is a huge transition. This transition is needed to be well understood by the people who do industrial planning, people who plan the urban centers, people who run the ministries of culture and the media. Members of the rural society can become effective part of the manufacturing and service sectors, but the government, the media, poets and the pulpit have to work together to have a programme for transferring a predominately rural population into a urban population capable of creating quality goods and services. Like Japan did! Japan also had a predominately rural population which was able to transform very quickly between the First World War and Second World War and during the period immediately after the Second World War, by using simple techniques; and very quickly people from villages were

3 quickly trained through very simple media affects; like small loud speakers placed in parks and on crowded intersections, where a lot of pedestrian traffic was going by; certain types of messages were being given to the public like How to cross the road?, How to ride an escalator?, How to behave in a super market?, What is the value of punctuality?, How to ride a train?, How not to ride on a train?, Where to buy a ticket?, How to buy the ticket? so these were very small messages given to the person from the village and when he was hearing it,very quickly Japan transformed its rural population into a sophisticated, urban population. Because, Ladies & Gentlemen unless we prepare, in Pakistan, a culture which is basically an urban culture, where punctuality, house-keeping, courtesy, attention to detail and other such social values, which lionize quality and sophistication, are instilled in people, you cannot expect quality products and services. How can a workforce which is absolutely rural adopt quality techniques suddenly, when they are given a job card and put on a factory floor? Quality on the shop floor is dependent on how an individual was prepared through upbringing, schooling, and the general environment. The home, the school, the masjid, the TV and drama prepare the citizens for the type of achievement which a particular society aims for. If public transport is not running on time; if exams do not take place on time ; it means the government has little regard for punctuality; and punctuality, ladies and gentlemen, is like a lifeline of manufacturing industry. Similarly other values which lead to quality products need to be inculcated in our society as a whole and cannot be relegated to the industry to deal with, alone, by itself.

4 It is important that social values like punctuality, team work, social view of business, 5S programmes are taken to the street level, to the school and masjid level, and children coming from school, and villagers coming into towns to work in factories, are given these messages through our different media techniques ; they have to be prepared to accept punctuality, team work and precision as a positive social value. Delivering on time and getting to work on time have to be brought our as the most positive social value. We have with us all the tools of creating cultural impact on our manpower but unfortunately a lot opportunities are being wasted. Our films and media and the advertisement coming from our multinational and cell phone companies are losing the opportunity of creating a modern work force with positive cultural values. Similarly through cultural impacts we can bring up the importance of professionalism, of Halal and Haram and the rejection of mediocrity, doing less then what one is being paid for and owing to this we find that there is absence of accountability like fake degrees etc is taking place and the society is going into a certain direction which is taking us away from objectives of becoming a tiger economy. The use of audio devices for cultural change and TV, media, drama, poetry, press reporting, we have to define our challenge for making a difference in culture and bring about a culture on the basis of which we can create a value adding society where we have our work force embraces the idea of having high quality products and creating a prospers society through quality and productivity. The Govt of Pakistan can play a basic role in creating a culture of quality and by showing how it embraces the quality culture. First of all the Govt must preach for trade taxes, it must showcase itself as productive organization & as a quality conscious organization and a Govt servant

5 must not be above the law for delving quality and productivity. When industry and business are being asked by the Govt to deliver the quality and productivity, one needs to ask whether the same is being practiced in the Govt organizations. The other way where the Govt of Pakistan can imp-inch is to have a national target for creating five basic values among them would by punctuality, and professionalism then making a programme where our poets, imams, teachers thinkers, the press, TV, media and advertising agencies all are brought on board to have a national target for instilling basic five core values in the public and it should be made mandatory for the media to bring up these values in whatever they are saying and as a nation we must go beyond the first hurdle of having five basic cultural values which would then lead us to a culture of quality and productivity. Because ladies & Gentlemen! The whole of Pakistan have to adopt productivity and quality as a concept and it would be very cruel to expect that only industry should remain isolation and try to create an environment within its fore walls. Lot of us are struggling to do the same but we work against the current because our media, press, thinkers, poets and our ulema are not espousing the same values and are far away from the culture needed for manufacturing floor or even for a good civilized urban society. Although there are small island of excellence within our manufacturing sector, and there are many of them in Pakistan, they are still far too few and far in between. The only way we can bridge the gap between them is by having the whole nation prepared along productivity and quality lines through cultural impact, through cultural interventions. You would note that cultural change initiative can best be delivered by the media which simultaneously entertains. Some of you may have seen the Indian films Three Idiots in which the university culture and the teaching culture has been exposed, its short comings have been brought out and

6 certain remedies has been suggested, but, in a comical way. The film is a comedy and has taught while it entertained. People have enjoyed watching, it but at the same time it made many people wonder about the current education system is the correct system or what can be done and how talent can be allowed to flourish and not stifled. Similarly we note that the Economy Development Board in Singapore, find out cultural gaps and the needed cultural changes; and they impact on the culture to improve it through their soap operas and other popular TV programs. The American film Star Wars was created mainly for national cohesion in a culturuall and ethnically diverse nation, where people need to work together without paying attention to how others look? What is their cast and what is their creed? So these are the changes which the Govt, ministry of culture and other thinking apparatuses, including the religious set ups in Pakistan, must have a look at, also, and come to a consensus on how to create a culture where we are first of all an organized urbanized society and subscribe to basic cultural values, where everyone of us can deliver quality on the shop floor, in the office and wherever we are. In the end, I would urge the Quality and Productivity Society of Pakistan to work on the cultural front and create links to the various stakeholders so as to create cultural interventions necessary for transforming the Pakistani society into a society capable of creating high quality goods and services. This would make the work of its member industries much easier for producing high quality value added goods and services!

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