Over 900 ISO 9001 (Quality Management), 80 HACCP (Food Safety Assurance) certified and 30 ISO 14001 (Environmental Management) certified companies operate in Sri Lanka today. This was indicated at the opening of the “National Conference on International Management Systems” organised by the Sri Lanka Standards Institution (SLSI), which was held last week in Colombo.

The conference was declared open by Minister of Science and Technology Prof. Tissa Vitharana MP, under whose ministry’s purview the SLSI operates. In his remarks to conference delegates, Prof. Vitharana noted if Sri Lanka wanted to emerge from the poverty gap, the country had to place greater importance on products meeting international standards. He also noted that this was especially relevant in terms of Sri Lanka’s competitors, who were continually upgrading their products so it was important that we too do the same.

The featured speaker of the conference was Satish Rao, a consultant and former Member of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Advisory Panel of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A veteran of management systems accreditation, Mr. Rao has also worked in Marine, Oil as well as other industries. Comprising technical sessions which included several real-world examples, this full-day conference programme mainly featured in-depth presentations on the Kyoto Mechanism (an initiative through the Kyoto Protocol), the Samanalawewa Power Station and HJ Condiments Ltd.

In addition, the conference included a number of presentations on processes such as “Improvement through implementation of ISO 9001”; “Employee Involvement – The key to success in ISO 14001 & OHSAS 18001”; “Integration of Management Systems”; and “Certification of Management Systems by SLSI”