DURIAN TUNGGAL
fhatihah@nstp.com.my
UNIVERSITI Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) has its own formula to elevate the name of the university to a world-class superior higher learning institution, receiving international recognition for its prestigious organizational quality management certification at the international level.
Director for UTeM’s Centre for Strategic, Quality and Risk Management (PPSKR), Prof Dr Rabiah Ahmad, said the department was serious in adhering to a well-established, quality-based strategic management formula, as well as taking into account other risk factors.
She said unifying the three key components involving strategic, quality and risk management was the best reference to ensure that the university achieved world standard certification standards.
“UTeM is unique not just because it is industry-oriented, but the consolidation of the three main components under PPSKR reflects a competitive university.
“In most other universities, strategic management is managed in ‘silo’ (working in their own community), but UTeM has taken a drastic step to institute PPSKR by integrating these three components that are managed at the central level and we have also taken the approach of creating an integrated framework,” she told NSTP.
Rabiah said, in order to achieve certification standards for quality management, UTeM has to undergo an internal and external auditing process in line with the implementation of the document.
“At university level, UTeM has a lineup of internal auditors who are monitored by PPSKR. When Sirim conducted a week-long audit in August, the meeting of auditors concluded that UTeM was eligible for the ISO 9001: 2015 certification for a period of three years,” she said.
She added, this made UTeM more than willing to take up the challenge in ensuring the university was able to achieve the quality standards of the management systems as well as in academic programme accreditation, besides being responsible for managing the risks of each work process.
“It’s important to maintain the reputation of UTeM and improve the competitiveness of the university, as well as to create world-class professional experts,” she said.
She said PPSKR expanded its work scope after combining several departments (strategic, quality and risk) to achieve the measurement of customer satisfaction of its students, staff and industry partners.
“UTeM is very serious about accreditation and quality. Research has shown that an excellent university takes into account all these components,” said Rabiah.
Hence, in 2015, the Centre of Quality Assurance (PJKA), which was established to ensure that UTeM would have centralised quality control, was upgraded to PPSKR,” she added.
“When public universities are asked to adopt prudent spending following the country’s current scenario of financial budget constraints, PPSKR also responded to challenges by optimising resources and combining the scope for these three components.
“Merging the scope of certification has resulted in reduced spending, together with better sharing of internal expertise and resources within the university and creating networks and links to other experienced Institutions of Higher Learning, “she said.
She added, it was not an easy task to implement the plan of unifying all UTeM staff with the quality management system, but they have managed to succeed, taking the opportunity to create mutual success.