SASO Holds 14 Workshops to Measure 7 Sectors Readiness for Quality and Excellence
SASO continued with the execution of the National Strategy Project for Quality, in collaboration with Dar Masarat for Research and Development, as part of its efforts to implement the royal vision, i.e. to make the Kingdom's products and services a global standard for quality and excellence by 2020. Events of the second stage of workshops, to measure the readiness for quality and excellence in the Kingdom's business sectors, are launched today (Tuesday) Safar 24, 1436 AH, corresponding to December 16, 2014, and will be held for two days at Holiday Inn - Al Qasr.
For his part, Sa'eed bin Hamoud al-Zahrani, Director General of Quality Control and the Kingdom's Quality Strategy, clarified that the measurement stage for business sectors' readiness for quality and excellence in the Kingdom included 14 workshops in which only 97 out of 108 targeted bodies participated in its first stage. These bodies included health, services, public education, industry, government, higher education and civil society sectors. The number of participants reached nearly 200 specialists and interests in quality. He praised the keenness of all bodies involved.
He continued saying that the second stage of workshops comes to complement SASO's efforts in this regard so as to measure the level of readiness of targeted sectors and establishments in the Kingdom, that seek for quality and excellence, and classify targeted sectors and establishments in terms of their readiness and excellence maturity in order to set work priorities in the next stage. Such workshops will help SASO determine the gap between the quality and excellence maturity of targeted sectors, in comparison with the best practices and global levels, with the identification of main challenges facing the implementation stage of the National Strategy for Quality in current sectors regarding human resources, organizational culture, measures, restructuring, operations and so on. This will eventually lead to the develop of necessary recommendations on areas for improvement in those sectors in order to deal with them and highlight their strengths to enhance and sustain them.
Al-Zahrani stressed that the move is one of many stages to execute the National Strategy Project for Quality which SASO initiated long time ago by holding introductory seminars in the Kingdom's major cities. These seminars were held to introduce sectors to the vital role that this project will play in the achievement of a comprehensive growth through the general application of quality strategies and overall improvement of products and services.
He added saying," The National Strategy Project for Quality aims at developing a national referential frame, for the quality of services and products and quality practices, that is in line with international standards in this regard. It also aims at contributing to the improvement of quality's infrastructure for all sectors in the Kingdom. Further, it seeks to reach a comprehensive program to disseminate the culture of quality and its applications to ensure the highest levels of quality and excellence in the fields of services and products of all targeted sectors, according to sector-specific data."
The director general of quality control at SASO stressed, at the conclusion of his speech, that the National Strategy Project is a national project that needs everyone's concerted efforts so as to provide an outstanding leading local experience and achieve the royal vision of the kingdom's products and services.