The 37th National Competition for quality control circles to strengthen national
competitiveness in quality and vitalize the economy was held for five days starting
from Aug 22 at COEX in Samseong-dong, Seoul.
With the theme “Smart Economic City Seoul Aiming at Global Top 5”,
this competition was hosted by the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards
(Administrator Kyung Huh) under the Ministry of Knowledge Economy and
Seoul City; and organized by the Korean Standards Association (CEO and Chairman
Chang Ryong Kim). This competition is Korea’s largest-scale quality event
with participation of 3000 members from 263 quality control circles, who had won
15 municipal and provincial competitions among 608 competing circles.
Quality control circles are small groups for improving business through quality
management activities in the workplace. There are 53,407 registered circles
in Korea, with 580,537 active members from a total of 8,785 workplaces.
The circles' presentations for the main event were made on the 3rd floor of COEX,
from Aug 23 to Aug 26 in five sessions, and were broadcast live on the national
quality net, "Q-NET". The competition consisted of four areas - improvement,
operation, community of practice (CoP), and research cases—plus 15 categories.
Excellent quality control circles selected from this competition will be awarded
Gold, Silver, and Copper Presidential Prizes in the national quality management
competition scheduled in Dec 2011.
The largest number ever, 263 teams, joined this competition. KSA recommended
presentation methods using easy explanations to help observers and the audience
to better understand the presentation and to make the competition fun and useful.
Also, KSA added a new free category to the competition in order to discover and
distribute exemplary cases of enterprises which have conducted improvement
activities through small groups, even if it was not in the form of a quality control
circles activity.
Participants in the opening ceremony for the competition included Yeong Gyu Kwon,
Deputy Mayor for Administrative Affairs of Seoul Municipal City, Yeong Hwan Kim,
Chairman of the Knowledge Economy Committee at the National Assembly,
Kyung Huh, Chairman of the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards,
Chang Ryong Kim, Chairman of Korean Standards Association, and about 1500 guests
related to quality management. During the event, a publicity booth was open;
photos of competitors exhibited; and a consulting booth operated by quality masters,
experts who assisted with solving quality issues for small- and medium-sized
enterprises.
On Aug 23, the National Council for Quality Management was held to exchange
information, including the current status of munipicial and provincial support for
quality management activities. On Aug 26, the National Proposal Competition
was opened to select excellent proposals from industrial fields.
CEO and Chairman Chang Ryong Kim said, “By far more teams participated
in the competition this year than last and a great number of quality teams,
including circles from small- and medium-sized enterprises, took part in the new
free category. We expect to discover a new model for problem-solving processes
unique to each company."