This has been found during the research that the Quality Circles approach has been used commercially in Pakistan. The Pakistan Tobacco Company, which has more than 8500 employees worldwide, produced nearly 17% share of the global market of cigarettes in 2005, has successfully used SQC tools as part of their Total Quality Management programme. (Quality through People, 2007)
7.2 Advantages of holding a Virtual event
The virtual holding of a convention on SQCs in 2014 will provide a great opportunity for participants in Pakistan to engage internationally. It does not only eliminate the barriers of distance and its financial aspects but also provides a wealth of information for them to be used in the future. Although English is one of the complementary element of the academia but generally the level of understanding of language for school and college students is not very advanced. The virtual platform provides the option of making all the necessary information available for them in Urdu. Another advantage for students in Pakistan will be to make contacts with like minded students across the globe through this event. These contacts will enable more collaboration and learning from cultural differences, as well as helping to obtain a more positive image as a nation, in the western world. The channels of collaboration established through the convention can later be used for the UNESCO ASPnet and any future projects.
7.3 Collaboration with PIQC Institute
The PIQC Institute of Quality in Lahore Pakistan is a higher education institution which has been working since 1995 to share the best practice in education. They hold regular national and international conferences addressing the issues of ‘Total Quality Management’ in academic and business context. The connection with this institute can be established before our convention in 2014, and we can have a large number of audience, including academics and business institutions in Pakistan. It also gives the opportunity to introduce them about the efforts of the World Council for Total Quality and Excellence in Education to collaborate in real time and share experiences.
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Recommendations
The annual convention in 2014 can become a groundbreaking virtual event, enabling us to take another approach to socio technical systems. The option of holding a virtual event is not only environmentally friendly but also economically feasible, administratively easier and will provide the participants a platform to keep the debate up and going.
First of all there is a great need to create a website for the World Council for Total Quality and Excellence. This should work as the first point of contact with details about all the current projects running, and also provide case studies about the success of QCs in different aspects of our lives. This will also enable us to make new contact and keep up with the continuous process of improvement. The website should be accompanied by a Blog where Quality Gurus can spread their knowledge through which new connection can be made. This project can be undertaken by the students in different countries, collaborating with each other and working together.
Although most of the virtual platforms use some well known technologies such as YouTube, and Social media sites, it can be costly to customise such technologies to create a platform of our own. The platforms such as Intercall can be customised more easily and cost effectively for our convention. So, the next step should be to test the functionality and reliability of such platforms during our conferences in 2012 and 2013. It will provide us a good idea about the suitability of such platforms, and give us an experience on which we can then develop further. These platforms are relatively new, so no statistical data has been found in terms of their use although some of them have big names in their list of corporate clients such as Microsoft, IBM, and HP etc.
There is a long term advantage of making all of the knowledge available across the globe by adopting the virtual track for our convention in 2014. The new Business School building provides all of the necessary technology required for such event to be successful. The virtual platform will also enable the participation of UNESCO partner schools across the UK and other academic institutes which have shown great interest in the past. All in all the advantages of holding this convention virtually outweighs the challenges faced by it.
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In the preparation of this report a lot of information has been used from various platforms. All of the lecture materials and extra material uploaded on Studyspace have been read, in order to understand the different technological options available to us. Some further reading was done from the online books, in order to provide logical solutions for the convention. Extensive research has been done in terms of finding the most suitable established virtual platform for the 2014 convention. There are many case studies available over the internet from some big corporations using similar platforms for their growing international needs. The suitability was analysed by reading some of the case studies.
After choosing Intercall as virtual platform, their website and marketing videos were analysed in order to see the suitability of their platform. Some of their corporate clients uploaded their views on YouTube after using their event. Some of these videos were being watched to see the reaction of the participants.
In order to analyse the suitability of a virtual event in the context of Pakistan, the reports from the United Nations were researched. It has been found that only 16% of the population in Pakistan has some kind of internet connection. Although the number is small but it is growing dramatically with the availability of Smartphone. During the research I came across another higher education institute working on similar issues as WCTQEE. They also hold international and national conventions and have links across the country. While recommending virtual event in context of Pakistan, I recalled the personal challenges faced by me while I was in Pakistan.
There were also group discussions being held among peers to evaluate different options. It enabled me to brainstorm ideas and learn their perspective about a specific technology. This project provided me a chance of engaging in a real project. I do hope that ideas provided in this report will be helpful for a successful convention in 2014.
A list of some resources used for research purposes is attached in the appendix.
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