Tamale, Sept. 1, GNA - Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) have been urged to improve upon the quality of their products to meet customer satisfaction and the emerging global market. Mrs Goski Alabi, a consultant on the National Quality Awareness Programme, and Research and Conference Coordinator of the Institute of Professional Studies, made the call at a workshop for SMEs in Tamale on Monday.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and the President's Special Initiative (PSI) organised the one-day forum.

Mrs Alabi said the programme formed part of a series of workshops aimed at improving the productivity and competitiveness of Ghanaian industries and products, both at the national and international levels. She said the workshop would present tools on how entrepreneurs could instil quality management systems in their companies, and also increase awareness of the importance of quality in the global and domestic places.

The SMEs would also be encouraged and supported to centre their businesses on the concepts of quality management. Mrs Alabi said a National Quality Steering Group (NQSG) had been set up as an operational framework for the integration of quality management into the national trade, industry and educational programmes. She said NQSG had developed four operational components including the introduction of quality management courses in tertiary institutions, a national quality awareness campaign, a quality awards programme and the establishment of the National Quality Professional Body (NQPB). She said under the NQPB, the Ghana Quality Institute (GQI) had also been established with its secretariat at the Institute of Professional Studies (IPS), while a national quality excellence awards had been developed to be spearheaded by the Ghana Standards Board (GSB), would be launched later this year. Mr Mombert Hoppe, a trade economist who was a facilitator at the workshop, explained that the concept of quality was an old idea, which had been transformed over the years to meet changing trends in the business world.

He said a new concept, which is of importance to the SMEs was Hazards Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) which had become synonymous with food safety. He explained that is was a system which identifies, evaluates and controls hazards which is significant for food safety adding that it gives confidence that food safety is being managed effectively and looks for hazards or anything could go wrong regarding product safety. 1 Sept. 08