Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs, February, 2019

Welcome to February, 2019 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

We have planned to stage-wise explore the subject of Quality Management – Road Ahead to Digital Transformation during the year 2019, by taking up brief, indicative, discussions on the different related issues every month. Our first step was to visit The Basics of Digitization, Digitalization and Digital Transformation in January, 2019.

Presently, we will lay the foundation of the Digital Quality Management.

A look at the ‘Industrial revolutions and future view’ embedded in the Wikipedia article Industry 4.0 also chalks the path of the development of the quality management in terms of its process of digital transformation.

As may be recalled during 3^rd phase of industrialization, the process of automating and digitalizing the quality management started taking roots. The process gained momentum at the level of higher-end, large and complex organizations, and had well permeated to the medium and smaller organizations by the time the winds of 4.0 stage had started blowing.

The organic digitization and the digitalization of the quality management, in effect, resembles the hierarchical model of Automation Pyramid, which  vertically cuts the systems of manufacturing operations into different levels that can be connected to certain types of information, systems, and time frames, which have been defined in a standard model by International Society of Automation (ISA) (ANSI/ISA, 2005) ^[1]

The automation pyramid according to the ISA 95 model. The five levels, 0-5, are defined in the middle. At each level, the typical system(s) used are showed to the right. Different levels are concerned with different time-frames which are visualized to the left.^[2]

resently, smaller organizations have reached the stage of maintaining most the critical data in the digital formats, medium organizations have reached a fair level of using various types of software applications and larger organizations have attained high capability to leverage software and tools that revolutionize the way companies operate; these solutions include Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, Business Process Management (BPM), and Quality Management System (QMS).^[3]

The industry, thus, has reached the stage whereat the data collection is on digitized paper-based forms or is directly onto digitalized formats; data processing is through simple to sophisticated spreadsheet applications and the resultant information is accessed / transferred through the home-grown database systems.

Rapidly changing technologies primarily drive the Digital Transformation, but its adoption is dependent on a carefully planned out strategy. Real benefits of digital transformation do not lie in optimizing individual technologies used rather than the overall integration and dependencies of the whole system.^[4]

It would not be out-of-place to assume that, by now, most of the quality professionals have a fair degree of exposure to the different types and styles of digital quality management practices. So, in our next episode we will take a closer look at Quality 4.0, and then would take up different components that presently reside within Quality 4.0.

We will now turn to our regular sections:

For the present episode we have picked up article, Jumping To Conclusions About Statistical Data & Events @ Innovation & Entrepreneurship topic of Management Matters Network, by MMN editorial staff, Ed’s Ink , ….Dr. Hamburg’s point: Even when statistical data are above reproach, much leeway still exists for individuals to interpret them in a manner that best supports their mindset and/or prejudices…”Just as the human ear,” Peter F. Drucker wrote, “does not hear sounds above a certain pitch, so does human perception all together not perceive what is beyond its range of perception.” …In his book Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Drucker reminds us, “When a change in perception takes place, the facts do not change. Their meaning does.”.

We now watch two videos of the ASQ TV, which are relevant to the topic of our discussions during the yea :

• Shared Meanings from Top to Bottom – Charlie Barton, President, Barton Consulting LLC, discusses the importance of shared meanings of words for organizations, and the negative business implications that could occur without that common knowledge.

Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems posting for January, 2019 is:

• Plan and Execute – Goals give us a sense of accomplishment and reason to celebrate, because we know when we have arrived at our destination. It is important to know where we want to go in our life. If that’s not clear, it will be worthwhile to spend some time to find out.
• Positive Reinforcement – No matter what you are trying or wanting to do, if you rehearse the future over and over in your mind and see yourself performing perfectly, you will be dramatically increasing your chances of bringing that future into reality.
• Be Your Best – Focus on those aspects of yourself that you would like to see more of, but do it in a systematic way, and do it over and over, every day. Soon, being yourself will adjust automatically, to becoming your “best” self.

I look forward to receive your inputs / suggestions that can further enrich our discussions on the subject of Digitalization in the Quality Management

Note: The images depicted here above are through courtesy of respective websites who have the copyrights for the respective images.

^[1]  Implementing Shop Floor IT for Industry 4.0 – Magnus Åkerman

^[2]  The-automation-pyramid-according-to-the-ISA-95-model

^[3]  How Digital Transformation And Quality management Play Important Roles In Optimizing Your Business

^[4] Digital Transformation Strategy for Next Generation eQMS