As part of its strategy to boost Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Make in India' initiative, the Quality Council of India (QCI) has joined hands with American Society for Quality (ASQ) for improving level of standards in sectors such as manufacturing and services.
ASQ is a global leader in quality improvement and standards.
The MoU, inked yesterday but announced today, is seen as an outcome of the renewed push to Indo-US ties in the recent past. It was signed in the presence of QCI Chairman Adil Zainulbhai and ASQ India Chief Amit Chatterjee.
"The scope of the joint programme has now been considerably expanded to cover domains of manufacturing, education, healthcare, governance and service. The MoU is a culmination of the recent meetings of the Prime Minister Modi and US President Barack Obama," Chatterjee said.
The alliance will enable institutionalisation of new quality paradigms in the field of training and delivery processes in manufacturing, healthcare, education, service industry and also in public service delivery processes.
"We will be targeting manufacturing and services sector and want to improve quality in one million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the next few years. In addition, QCI along with ASQ would like to fundamentally improve the quality of the government services delivered to the citizen," Zainulbhai said.
QCI has plans to reach out to 10 lakh SMEs with its quality improvement programmes in the next three-five years from 10,000 SMEs at present.
