SPRING pours in $10 million funding for quality standards

630 enterprises availed in 2013.

SPRING Singapore continues to encourage more local enterprises in building quality and adopt standards as strategic business tools to become more productive, to reduce wastage, to manufacture safer, higher quality and environment-friendly products; or to achieve stronger product and service differentiation.

In a release, SPRING announced that it has added another $10 million in grant budget to support efforts in the above areas and has developed and reviewed some 180 Singapore Standards and built up a robust accreditation system with a pool of some 290 competent conformity assessment bodies in 2013.

SPRING launched a new accreditation scheme for the certification bodies of learning service providers (LSPs) to ensure that certification bodies will provide systematic and impartial third party assessment and certification of LSPs.

“As quality and excellence will play a bigger role in the transformation and growth of our economy, our programmes must continue to stay relevant, and deliver benefits to Singapore’s enterprises so that they can remain competitive,” said Mr Tan Kai Hoe, Chief Executive, SPRING Singapore, at the Quality and Standards Conference 2014. A robust quality and standards infrastructure assures the quality of Singapore products and services, and as a result strengthens the overall credibility and trust in the Singapore Brand.

Here’s more from SPRING:

In partnership with SPRING, the Singapore Standards Council (SSC) and SAC have developed strategic plans to address the emerging standardisation and accreditation needs of local industries. These include raising productivity, accelerating the development of new growth sectors, increasing resource efficiency and sustainability, as well as addressing social and safety needs.

Many industries will benefit from these measures. The manufacturing industry will see new Singapore Standards which will improve its logistics support and put in place more efficient business processes. In growth sectors like the infocomm industry, the SSC and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) developed the world’s first multi-tiered cloud computing security standard that provides companies with greater clarity on the different levels of security offered by Cloud Service Providers. In the area of resource efficiency, new Singapore Standards and Accreditation Schemes for energy and water efficiency management have also been developed.