SRI LANKA STANDARDS INSTITUTION (SLSI)

Q: How important are awards as a benchmark of success?

A: The prime objective of the Sri Lanka National Quality Award (SLNQA) is to evaluate an organisation’s performance excellence, which is why the highest percentage is allocated to the results criterion.

This focuses on product performance and process effectiveness, governance, and financial and market performances. So winning an SLNQA demonstrates to stakeholders that the organisation has performed successfully – even in challenging times.

Q: How should entities be recognised in a way that ensures transparency, impartiality and relevance?

A: To ensure transparency, SLSI recruits qualified and experienced examiners representing experts in each award category. After the initial evaluation process, a review committee comprising SLSI’s Director-General and Deputy Directors-General, as well as experts from the public and private sectors, analyses the scores and recommends award recipients to a panel of judges.

The panel of judges is presided over by a retired Judge of the Supreme Court, and comprises the Secretary to the Ministry that SLSI comes under, secretaries of several other ministries, President of the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Sri Lanka (FCCISL) and Chairperson/Secretary-General/CEO of The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC).

This ensures a thorough, unbiased and transparent evaluation process, resulting in winners having the opportunity to apply and participate in international awards such as the Global Performance Excellence Award (GPEA) conducted by Asia Pacific Quality Organization (APQO).

Dr. Siddhika G. Senaratne

Director-General

Q: How can awards and accolades solidify corporate reputations?

A: The SLNQA is based on the world renowned performance excellence criteria created through a public-private partnership (PPP) by the US’ Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA). These criteria are used in over 80 countries for their national quality awards.

MBNQA is considered the gold standard, and uses stringent criteria to maintain the integrity of the award and its winners. SLNQA has been using similar criteria to maintain the award’s quality over the past 27 consecutive years.

Therefore, winners of the SLNQA can exhibit their performance excellence in product quality and process excellence, to local and international stakeholders.

Q: How can awards schemes impact overall business performance?

A: SLNQA has a positive influence on performance excellence by raising industry benchmarks and recognising best practices. As the only accomplished and recognised national quality award in Sri Lanka, SLNQA provides proper guidelines and motivates organisations to reach industry best standards to achieve market recognition.

It comprises seven criteria for applicants – leadership, strategy, customer measurement, analysis and knowledge management, workforce, operations and results. These are focused on two goals: delivering growing value to customers and improving the organisation’s overall performance. The award is regarded as the highest honour an entity can receive in quality and performance excellence.

“Winners of the SLNQA can exhibit their performance excellence in product quality and process excellence, to local and international stakeholders

Q: How about the ability of smaller businesses to compete with larger ones through such schemes?

A: To offer SMEs the opportunity to improve their product quality and process excellence, SLSI introduced a less stringent award scheme: the Small and Medium Enterprises Quality Award (SMEQA). This award guides SMEs to become high-performance organisations – aiding them to one day become SLNQA winners, and earn local and international recognition.

Telephone 267574 | Email dg@slsi.lk | Website www.slsi.lk