Malta Chamber joins European Organisation for Quality

In its continuous bid to enhance value-added services to its members and lead by example, the Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry has become Malta's representative within the European Organisation for Quality.

One of the foremost promoters of quality in its broadest sense on the continent, the EOQ, a non-profit organisation, will also allow the Chamber to extend its European network.

"Through membership of the EOQ, the Chamber is striving for constant improvement, to enhance its value-added services for the benefit of members," Chamber president Helga Ellul said yesterday. "We are committed to vigorously promoting the practice of quality among the business community as a precursor to enhance competitiveness on an enterprise level that will translate at the national level.

"In the coming months, we aim to extend our membership further, through our involvement in training programmes, of which the Malta Chamber will then be certified as a training provider in areas of quality management."

The Chamber's quality management committee, led by Emidio Friggieri, and the secretariat are currently establishing a quality management system in accordance with ISO 9001:2008. It has also compiled a quality manual to provide a descriptive summary of the overall quality management system operated at the Chamber.

The system is designed to provide documented procedures and control mechanisms to assure the quality of the product or service delivered, and to meet or possibly exceed the quality requirements and expectations of the Chamber's customers. Controls within the system allow for the prevention of non-conforming products and services, early detection of discrepancies, and corrective action to assure consistent delivery of quality products and services.

Mr Friggieri's committee and the secretariat have provided fact sheets based on the EFQM model, dispatched a self-assessment questionnaire to all members, and is to hold the third annual quality conference in November.

"We have some development plans here in Malta, which I cannot elaborate on, and which we discussed this morning (yesterday)," EOQ director general Eric Janssens told The Times. "We want to develop our personal registration activity for quality management and quality audit in Malta with know-how from EOQ for all of Europe.

"Every national organisation can suggest activities which are then discussed by the executive board or decided upon immediately, as we are a lean organisation. Our vision is quality in its broadest sense. In principle our main task is quality in people - personal certification. People are the base of every process. There is no process developed without people involved. Quality auditors are involved in every sector."

Primarily a European network of member organisations, EOQ's remit reaches as far as Kazakhstan. It associates companies and experts in all fields of quality, occupational health and safety, environment management and corporate social responsibility.

There are more than 70,000 members and 50,000 companies under its umbrella in Europe and worldwide through partner organisations.

Among its diverse roles are the creation and management of personnel registration schemes, participation in and sponsorship of thousands of events at European Quality Week since 1995, granting the annual European Quality Leader Award since 2003, and management of the European Voluntary Registration Scheme, a database of quality organisations and professionals.

The EOQ will hold its congress in Izmir in October when the executive board meeting and its general assembly will be held. All members, whatever their size, have the same votes.

Jason Azzopardi, the Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business, praised the Chamber's initiative yesterday, pointing out that there was a misconception among small businesses that quality management was only for large organisations. Quality, he emphasised, is what leads to repeat custom and gives businesses the cutting edge above the competition.