Zoran Lekic

ABOUT THE PRESENTATION
Quality of Third Life
Aging of people is becoming one of the major areas where quality aspects will be focused in the future.  In some parts of the world, especially in Europe, the average age of people is going up. Although the limit for the retirement is increasing, from 60 to 65 and even more, we will soon end up with quite high number of retired people, still healthy and in good condition for active participation. What should they do, how to get them interested and usefull at the same time?
The vision and mission of the organizations which deal with quality, for example ASQ and EOQ, could not only be quality of products, processes, efficiency and effectiveness, organizational quality, top perfomance and business excellence. Final goal of various methods, tools, systematic aproaches etc have been considered through good business results. The final achievement is in fact measured by profit accumulated.  This is looked upon as the basis which should result in better quality of lives of all stakeholders involved.
Could it be possible not to go through the whole loop and plan and realize possibilities for better quality of life, before even accumulating fantastic results and profits? The idea has been even challenging if we take into account the quality of life of the entire population, including retired people.
In the presentation it will be shown how this problem has been attacked and solved in Slovenia. We have succesfully developed the project called Third University. More than 20.000 people have been involved in a number of different training programs, covering wide range of aspects -  sociological, behavioral, technical, economical etc. The programme became suddenly the big hit, with all elements of business approach. All the involved pay monthly membership fee to the University plus the tuition depending on how many courses they participate. Total costs for the participants are very low, but nevertheless it's enough to accumulate the budget for running the programme successfully. The main benefits could be shown as:
- retired people have once again "discovered" the sense of living, the sense of being important and not being pushed at the edge of the society, just waiting for the last day;
- many of them have been involved not only as »students« but as well as animators and trainers. They have accumulated a lot of knowledge through their professional careers, why not to transfer it to the others;
- some analyses and investigation have already been done showing  benefits on state level. Retired people involved in Third University are more healthy than the others, less visiting doctors and taking medicine drugs, what is saving money on state level;
- some courses have been opened not only to retired people, but as well to jobless ones. Nowadays,  it is very difficult to get job for someone over fifty. With knowledge and self confidence acquired at Third University, several have been employed successfully.
The rapidly changing society requires constant learning, regardless of one's age. It is even more important for retired people, while those who will not be able to change along with the society, will soon be outdated  (just think about all various every day routines - electronic and informatic requirements).  The presentation will show the vision of the project with all relevant data, statistics, business deveopment data, key perfomances and evaluations of satisfaction of all involved stakehoders.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Zoran Lekic received his diploma at University Ljubljana, Faculty for Mechanical Enginering,  in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
He was awarded Fullbright scholarship for master studies in USA. He graduated at University of Florida in Gainseville and became master of science in industrial engineering. He has been listed as a UN quality expert and have completed several missions for Unido.
After the issuance of ISO 9000 series of standards, Mr.Lekic started with promotion of implementing and certifying quality systems in Slovenian industry. In 1990 he joined Bureau Veritas (BV), international inspection and classification company. He established BV branch office in Ljubljana and worked as chief executive. BVQI - certification company within Bureau Veritas group achieved the market leading position in certification of management systems in Slovenia.
Mr.Lekic is a registered IRCA lead auditor for quality systems in 1988 and since then, he has  completed more than 1000 audits in Slovenia and various European countries. He managed and lectured on more than 350 various seminars covering quality, productivity, network planning, work measurements and other industrial engineering topics. He has also been approved as IRCA tutor for quality management systems lead auditor seminars.
Mr.Lekic has been linked to EOQ for a long time, participating at many EOQ Congresses.. He has been actively associated for many years with SZKO (Slovenian Quality and Excellence Association) as vice president  and its official representative at EOQ.