Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs – September, 2020

Welcome to September 2020 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

For the year 2020, we have chosen the core subject of Revisiting Basic Quality Concepts w.r.t. the sustained success of the organization As of now we have visited

• History of Quality in January 2020
• The Sustained Success of Organization in February 2020
• Organizational Context in March 2020
• Understanding Needs and Expectations of the Interested Parties in April 2020
• Risk Based Approach in May 2020
• Opportunity Based Approach in June 2020
• The Organizational Knowledge for the Sustained Success in July 2020
• Competent people for the sustained organizational success in August 2020

We take up Process Management for Sustained Success as our next core concept this month–

The importance of process as the fundamental block of every management systems of an organization is now universally accepted.

Unfortunately, ‘process’ is normally seen with a narrow utilitarian concept of the tool for managing the set of related activities. At best, it is considered a link in chain of different processes that makes up the management system. As result, many times its usefulness in in continually improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization’s performance also is underplayed.

The organizational knowledge that is inherently stored process management gets locked up in either the dusty files or on the huge database servers, behind well protected ‘security’ locks. This traditional approach to the process management falls short on fundamental process management requirements as a live vehicle to carry the organizational knowledge:[1]

These limitations help in providing the road map of a process management platform can help you prioritize process excellence and set your organization on the road to greater success.[2]

The stages of development in the ISO standard 9004 reflects the changing emphasis of importance of process management as a tool to attain sustained success. From being a set of guidelines for improved performance, it became guidelines for process improvement, and then process improvement itself became the approach to manage the sustained success, and now links it to the quality of the organization for achieving sustained success.

The Clause 8 relates process management of organization’s core and support processes behind the scenes of an organisation’s sustained success. This creates a system in which the needs and expectations of interested parties thrive in the vibrant quality of an organisation. The Quality of organization being now defined as “the degree to which the inherent characteristics of the organisation fulfill the needs and expectations of its customers and other interested parties, in order to achieve sustained success”.

The 2018 edition of the standard recognizes that by developing the leading KPIs that are linked to the organization’s dynamically changing context w.r.t. the needs and expectations of its customers and other relevant interested parties,  “Organisations deliver value through activities connected within a network of processes.”[3]

The detailed note on Process Management for Sustained Success can be accessed by clicking on the hyperlink.

We will now turn to our regular sections:

In the series the Organizational Culture, we have taken up Measuring Organizational Culture – Measurement of organizational culture acts as guide to the roadmap for improving culture and the performance through better decisions, by more engaged people and more cohesive culture leads to improved performance .

We now watch ASQ TV, wherein we look at a relevant video from the archive:

• What is the Baldrige Program? – The Baldrige Program was established in 1987 to encourage American organizations to practice effective quality control in the provision of goods and services so they could better compete in a demanding global market.

To learn more about the Baldrige Excellence Program Click Here.

From Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems this month we have picked up one article

• Advantages of Wait Time and what we do with that time. You can either keep fuming and fretting or regard this as gift of time. In the latter case, this can be gainfully utilized to perform something which was being postponed because of ‘lack of time’ – be it develop possible solutions to till now unresolved problems, plan (revise) day’s to-do-list, or just creatively relax and recharge your batteries. The possibilities are endless, in fact limited by your own determination and imagination. But there is no doubt that this is THE time to create a better life for you and the others you influence

 I look forward to your views / comments / inputs to further enrich the subjects of Basics of Quality and Organizational Culture and their role in Creating and Maintaining Sustained Success.

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

[1] 5 Key Factors to Creating Successful, Sustainable Process Management – Ivan Seseji

[2] 5 ways process management can drive sustainable success

[3] Achieving sustained success with ISO 9004:2018 – Hope Kiwekete