MMC Oil & Gas Engineering Sdn Bhd Participation in “Development of Productivity Specialists: A Capacity Building for ASEAN Managers “ held in the Philippines from 4th Sep 06 to 22 Sep 06.

It was indeed an honour for MMC Oil & Gas Engineering Sdn Bhd to be selected by the National Productivity Corporation (NPC) of Malaysia as one of the two service companies in Malaysia to participate in the “Development of Productivity Specialists: A Capacity Building for ASEAN Managers “ held in the Philippines from 4th Sep 06 to 22nd Sep 06. The other Malaysian company was Telekom, Malaysia. The active participation of MMC Oil & Gas in awards organized by NPC in the past few years such as the Prime Minister’s Quality Award, Quality Management Excellence Award and Productivity Award prompted NPC to invite the company to represent Malaysia to the learning and sharing forum which was also participated by Managers from the other ASEAN countries namely Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. There were altogether eighteen (18) participants from the ten (10) ASEAN countries. The cost of the program was borne by the Asian Productivity Corporation.

The objectives of the course are:

1. To train managers from manufacturing and service corporations from ten (10) ASEAN member countries in integrated productivity improvement approaches and strategies for application at the firm and organization levels; and
2. To develop the competencies of participants in conducting training and consulting services on productivity and quality (P&Q) improvement tools.

The program was first launched in 1996 in Manila, based on a similar program designed and tested by the Productivity and Development Center of the Development Academy (DA) of the Philippines. The present program for ASEAN managers is a special collaboration between the Asian Productivity Organization (APO)(of which the Secretariat is based in Tokyo, Japan) and the Jakarta-based ASEAN Foundation. The DA of Philippines was the facilitator for the program.

The modules of the program included:

• Business Organization and Productivity
• The organization and it’s key business processes
• Creating a Productivity & Quality (P & Q) culture
• Case Study Presentation
• Approaches and Tools for Productivity Improvement
• Developing competencies in promoting P&Q, training competencies and consulting competencies

The program methodologies included lectures, quick P & Q diagnosis of selected companies, workshops, individual training presentations, video/films and case presentations.

Mr. TJ Sow, Manager, Quality Assurance, represented MMC Oil & Gas at the program. Besides sharing knowledge on P & Q tools, the program also provided MMC Oil & Gas a venue to inform the other ASEAN participants on the business activities of the company. While MMC Oil & Gas has already received significant recognitions for the awards for excellent organizations that it has participated in the previous years including winners of Enterprise 50 and Technology Business Review Awards, the skills and knowledge learnt during the three week program will be very useful for charting the next course of the productivity and quality journey for the company.

By : TJ Sow
Oct 2006

Mr TJ Sow & En Ramlee, Malaysian participants	Mr TJ Sow, during a sharing session