A Cartoonist’s perspective of ISO Management System Certification Standards

The standard, in its most common form, is defined as norm, convention, requirements. In essence, these are mutually agreed way(s) of doing something. As such, the standards would cover any activity under the sun, provided the concerned interested parties agree to a way of doing that thing.

The standards can be categorized into 4 major types:

1. 1. Fundamental standards – which concern terminology, conventions, signs and symbols, etc.;
   2. Test methods and analysis standards – which measure characteristics such as temperature and chemical composition;
   3. Specification standards – which define characteristics of a product (product standards), or a service (service activities standards) and their performance thresholds such as fitness for use, interface and interoperability, health and safety, environmental protection, etc.;
   4. Organization standards – which describe the functions and relationships of a company, as well as elements such as quality management and assurance, maintenance, value analysis, logistics, project or system management, production management, etc.

For the subject of today’s article, we have confined our discussions to the technical standards, in general, and Management System Certification (MSC) standards published by ISO, in particular. We have also consciously stayed away from explaining the subject specific terminology, since we intend to address the article to non-ISO–MSC- standards practicing people as well.

The trigger for compiling the cartoons on ISO MSC is the  World Standards Day  – Each year on 14 October, the members of the IEC, ISO and ITU celebrate World Standards Day, which is a means of paying tribute to the collaborative efforts of thousands of experts worldwide who develop the voluntary technical agreements that are published as International Standards.

Every year a very relevant theme is selected around which the celebrations of Day are planned.  The theme for World Standards Day 2019 is Video standards create a global stage – The video compression algorithms standardized in collaboration by IEC, ISO and ITU have been honored with two Primetime Emmy Awards, recognizing that these standards are central to industry’s ability to meet rising demand for video, one of the most bandwidth-intensive applications running over global networks.

International Standards meet industry demand for powerful compression capabilities. They also enable smooth transitions to the next generation of video compression technology, helping industry to maximize return on each wave of investment.

Having standards recognized and respected all over the world means that video encoded on one device can be decoded by another, regardless of the device being used. This introduces economies of scale that help to grow the market, giving innovators the confidence to invest in new video applications and services.

To create the innovations of today and tomorrow we have to work together, but first we need to understand each other. To exchange knowledge, to make things compatible, ISO standards are the solid base, the common language that humanity can rely on. (EN, ES, FR, DA subtitles)[1]

ISO has published around 22812 International Standards on wide ranging industries and subjects.

With so much of the background information, we will now gradually switch over to our core topic.

Cartoon, being a medium to communicate in a humorously graphical art form, this tool is now very systematically and highly professionally is used to promote and popularize ISO standards .

 

One of the cartoonists who do such graphics for ISO, Cartoonist Alexane. Rosa, tells: “With a little imagination and humour, the human dimension of technical standards can usually be communicated through cartoons and colourful graphics.”

The cartoon graphics are also very effectively used as training aids for easily explaining the contents of the standard as well as an aid-de-memory for maintain that understanding for a longer time.

Source credit: ISO Training Institute

These graphical curation-oriented tools are also used to convey the practical benefits of implementing the ISO standards in the organization.

The following graphic is used to covey the concept – “New standards become new ideas”. It graphically conveys what is textually conveyed as “Once we have found new ways of doing things, we incorporate them in our Quality Systems. ISO 9001 was the foundation, now we start to build the house.’

Source credit © Richard Duszczak

And now we take up the cartons that inherently have a satire embedded into the message it conveys. The message may be a soft satire or a pithy punch, but in the ultimate analysis, it tells ISO-MSC practicing professionals what to-do and, generally, what not-to-do.

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Here a famous fable of an elephant and five blind man is used as a metaphor. This picture is used to convey that different people will look at the standard in their own -subjective-way. It is also used convey that different people in an organization will have different perceptions of risks and opportunities that organization needs to address at any given time.

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As is the general prevailing practice, every country has its own standard, and some times several industries, and several organizations in an industry will have their own standards.

Source credit: https://xkcd.com/927/

This is the genesis of ISO coming into existence, to act as a central, international confederation that builds and publishes common, universally applicable, international, standards.

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Many professionals (mistakenly, of course) treat the standard as a gospel!

Source credit: ISO Standards – The backlash Martin Wakeman

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One major intent of the way the international standards are written is to present the content of the standard in as easy as possible manner to understand, leave the minimum possible room for too many possible alternative interpretations. But, by the time that gets explained and / or and implemented by The Experts, it becomes more and more garbled.

Source credit: Summarized ISO Standards = Levi Roundy

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The most telling satirist commentary comes from the Dilbert (which incidentally is a subject that can be taken up for an independent, full-scale, discussion). The following strips are self-explained punches:

source: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1996-10-04/)

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As the years of implementation of the standard build on, the practice of application of the core principals of the standard become more cliched, which then (so unfortunately) gets demonstrated as the ‘Philosophy of BIG corporations’.

Source credit: gnurf

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The organizations associated with practice of implementing, auditing or certifying the management system standards must keep questioning about the outcomes of application of management systems – . “Is certification benefiting the operation of business operators?” “Isn’t certification processes obstructing the real ISO mission? …In other words, unless it is a system to improve and create sustained success for your business, management system is worthless.

This positive attitude, performance oriented and people centric guideline sparked the revised design of new structure of the ISO standards to come up for revision or being published first time after 2012. The new High Level Structure now seeks to make the standards proactive, responsive and wider-eyed than was the case of the standards designed before.

Before 2012:

Expected post-2012

Source credit: https://www.enms-doc.com/index31.html

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As we reach the celebrations of Deepawali, I take this opportunity to wish a bon voyage to the ISO MSC fraternity in their search for the sustained success of the organization by implementing the standards in their true spirit….

[1] Dare to dream BIG: Standards empower innovators

 

Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs, December 2018

Welcome to December, 2018 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

This is the last issue of 6^th annual period of our blog carnival of quality management articles and blogs. We have taken up Sustained Success of an Organization as our key topic for discussion.

ISO 9004: 2018 goes on to state that “Factors affecting an organization’s success continually emerge, evolve, increase or diminish over the years, and adapting to these changes is important for sustained success. Examples include social responsibility, environmental and cultural factors, in addition to those that might have been previously considered, such as efficiency, quality and agility; taken together, these factors are part of the organization’s context.”

We will pick three different articles that individually links up efficiency, quality and agility respectively with the sustained success.

Efficiency and Sustained Success:

Building Efficient Organizations – An efficiency mindset is the key to long-term gains. – Ryan Morrissey, Peter Guarraia, Véronique Pauwels and Sudarshan Sampathkumar – There is no fixed blueprint for embedding efficiency in an organization’s DNA. In our experience, however, successful companies share a common overarching approach: They make sure their efficiency effort spans five critical areas: strategy, metrics, commitment, behaviors and culture. Tenacity and a sustained investment in these areas create the best chance of success.

There is an interesting white paper – Capturing Operational Efficiency and Sustainable Value through Claims – by Capegemini and Guidewire,which studies the business case for claims transformation and paying specific attention to the critical factors that generate benefits, insurers can capture substantial operational efficiency and sustainable value for the insurance companies..

Quality and Sustained Success

ISO 9004 goes beyond product quality concept of consistently meeting the requirements of customer and stresses on two key concepts for of an Organization:

• focus on the concept of “quality of an organization”;
• focus of the concept of “identity of an organization”

The relationship between efficiency, effectiveness, sustained success and the quality of management in terms of immediate and final results.

The Figure here above shows a diagram describing the company’s hierarchy. It includes the company’s embedded resources, processes, immediate results (produced goods and services), as well as final results and impact (strategic effect). Immediate results should be presented in vector form

Agility and Sustained Success:

The leaders of organization design at McKinsey, principals Wouter Aghina and Aaron De Smet, explain what agility means and how organizations can evolve to thrive in an environment that demands constant change in the article, The keys to organization agility. Agility is when you thrive on change and get stronger and it becomes a source of real competitive advantage. (For more on the importance of being both agile and stable, see “Agility: It rhymes with stability.”)

There are a few more, general, articles which helps in understanding how to build sustained success:

• Dorie Clark, in her article, The Secret to Sustained Success draws on Chris Zook, co-head of Bain & Company’s Global Strategy Practice to state that the best companies focus on identifying and leveraging their core strengths, rather than chasing random new acquisitions and opportunities. (See her previous article on “Why You Should Kill Your Ideas.”)
• A winning culture …can be the catalyst that ignites an organization into truly becoming a “best place to work!”. The article offers 5 keys:
  • Establish a corporate set of core values that highlights being a champion for doing the right thing and taking care of people.
  • Communicate the values through the behavior and actions of the management.
  • Hire people who fit your values – Invest the resources – time, money, energy – to determine if a candidate fits with your values.
  • Enhance employee sense of ownership– This ownership is derived from opportunities that enable employees to know their leaders, to being informed on the success of the company, to know who their customers are, and future plans for the company.
  • Assess employee passion and satisfaction – and act on results.
• How to Create Sustained Success is a rapid-fire summary of Jim Collins’ famous first book, ‘Built to Last‘.

Recognizing the limitation of what can be covered in an article like ours, one can find good deal of highly useful literature on the subject.

We will now turn to our regular sections:

For the present episode we have picked up William Cohen, Ph.D.’s article The Focus on the Customer and What the Customer Values @ Effective Management topic of Management Matters Network….At the strategic level this could mean an important differential advantage in positioning against competitors to win customers.

We now watch two videos of the ASQ TV, one of which is related to quality improvement and other one containing the year-end message:

• Enhancing Quality through Improved Quality Reports : Gregory (Grisha) Gorodetsky, Safety, Environmental & Quality Manager, Wipro Givon, discusses the importance for organizations to format all documents, such as quality reports, in an identical way.
• 2018 Year-End Message: Elmer Corbin, ASQ Chair : In his year-end video message, ASQ Board of Directors Chair Elmer Corbin highlights significant accomplishments in 2018 and acknowledges contributions of the Board, GCC, TCC, member leaders, members, and staff.

Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems posting for November, 2018 is:

• Success makes us feel good, but failures teach us valuable lessons – Certainly, negative results are never fun, but they shouldn’t become demoralizing. What innovative people realize is that negative results are signaling that something different and new needs to be done…It is easier to understand the concept of productive mistakes when the situation is reversed…When the project is successful. In this situation, your assumptions were correct, you most likely took the standard approach to getting the tasks done and did a good job managing the project…While completing a successful project is something to feel good about, there may have been a missed opportunity to get breakthrough improvements from the project. Was it your objective to simply get the job done, or was it your goal to take some risks that could take the business to a new level of performance?.. Think about this for a moment to consider how you can adjust your mindset. Most likely you won’t become another Thomas Edison, but there’s no doubt you can find ways to make your life more productive.
• Personal GPS – May be you’ve never thought of your roadmap for success being like a personal Goal Projection System (GPS) but it is much the same. Let’s see if we can connect the dots…Ask yourself, what would you like the outcomes to be for yourself at the end of one, five, ten and twenty years? Once you have that outcome, what will you see? What will you hear? What will you feel? Be as specific as possible, as you write the answers down…After this is done which as much honesty as possible, examine current reality…This process isn’t easy and will take some time but stay with it. You also should revisit this on occasion to ensure you’re staying on tract. Once you have everything recorded, you’ll have a roadmap you can use to guide you to a very personal kind of success.

On that note I take your leave for the year.

Trust you had had a great year and wish that your 2019 also is more productive, more successful, and above a thoroughly enjoyable year of your personal and career life journeys.

 

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

 

P.S. All episodes for the year 2018 of this quality blog carnival can be accessed at  / downloaded from Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs, 2018.

Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs – November, 2018

Welcome to November, 2018 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

Let us recollect from our August, 2018 issue that two of the three key changes that characterize ISO 9004: 2018 are:

• focus on the concept of “quality of an organization”;
• focus of the concept of “identity of an organization”

We will expand the concept of Identity of an Organization in this November, 2018 issue.

Organizational Identity is not a new subject to the world of management academics and the practicing professionals. However with the introduction of the concept into the body of the revised ISO 9004:2018 standard, the subject opens up a very interesting dimension to the quality professionals too.

Organizational identity is a field of study in organizational theory that seeks the answer to the question: “who are we as an organization?” ..According to Whetten (2006) the attributes of an organizational identity are central, enduring, and distinctive/distinguishing (CED).

• Central attributes are ones that have changed the history of the company; if these attribute were missing, the history of the organization would have been different.
• Enduring attributes are ones deeply ingrained in the organization, often explicitly considered sacrosanct or embedded in the organizational history.
• Distinguishing attributes are ones used by the organization to separate itself from other similar organizations, but can also set minimum standards and norms for that type of organization.

Organizational Identity = Purpose + Philosophy – As a unit, the Purpose and the Philosophy are the central attributes of the Organizational Identity that have defined the character of the organization and the cause that it has served over the years. These elements of Organizational Identity serve as the basis for all aspects of the business.

Organizational Identity- From ‘Why we are’ to ‘Who we are – Organizational Identity also helps define the organization to Who Are We? And Why Are We?. Very few organizations actually know the answer to these questions – ’Who are we as an organization?’ ’What are we doing?’ ’What do we want to be in the future?’ An organization’s identity affects its actions, interpretation, and decision-making by its members and the management. This identity also has a huge impact on organizational change processes.

Is your identity given or created? | Marcus Lyon | TEDxExeter : Using Somos Brasil (We are Brazil), a multimedia photography, sound and DNA project, Marcus Lyon brings us images, stories and ancestral DNA to examine modern Brazilian identity. In turn he asks us to consider what drives us and what we can become.

IKEA is known as one organization that is strongly identified for the alignment of its organizational identity with its brand. For IKEA, its vision of creating a better everyday life for the many people also means making a difference for the people and communities where they work. The film – The IKEA Group – The Story of How We Work – lets you know more about how.

Finally, here is a Management system model to achieve sustained success

We will now turn to our regular sections:

For the present episode we have picked up Joshua Spodek’s article The 20/80 Rule, Integrity, and the Opposite of the 80/20 Rule @ Leadership Step By Step column of Management Matters Network….Vince Lombardi says that paying attention to details always pays, i.e. paying attention to the last few percent. When you care about the 1 percent that others don’t, people look to you to lead. It is more important to get every detail right than getting it right most of the time.

We now watch one of the latest ASQ TV  episodes:

• Risk Intelligence for the Organization – Sanjeev Koshe, Vice President, Management Assurance Group, Tata Housing Development Company Limited, explains how to go beyond brainstorming identify risk, measuring it, and how best to deliver a risk report.
• Big Data – discusses Big data, data analytics, and predictive modeling, and how organizations and quality professionals can use all three. Additional reference – The Deal With Big Data

Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems posting for October, 2018 is:

• Pursuit of Excellence – Like the old story of the race between the tortoise and the hare, it’s the slow, steady and continuous pursuit of excellence that wins the race, not the flashy sprint that can’t be sustained. Experience has taught me to believe that sustainable improvement requires an organizational culture change. Continuous improvement is more about rigor and discipline than technique. It is about the pursuit of excellence.

I look forward to your inputs / criticisms/ observations to enhance the utility of our Quality Management Blog Carnival.

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

Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs – October, 2018

Welcome to October, 2018 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

Let us recollect from our August, 2018 issue that two of the three key changes that characterize ISO 9004: 2018 are:

• focus on the concept of “quality of an organization”;
• focus of the concept of “identity of an organization”

In our present October, 2018 issue, we will expand the concept of Quality of an Organization.

ISO 9004: 2018 draws upon the definition of quality form ISO 9000:2015 and states that, ‘The quality of the organization is the degree to which the inherent characteristics of the organization fulfil the needs and expectations of its customers and other interested parties, in order to achieve sustained success’…In short, Quality of an Organization is equated with its ability to achieve sustained success.

Sustained success in a complex, demanding and ever-changing environment is not to be taken for granted. For example, the 2018 Corporate Longevity Forecast predicted that by 2027, organizations represented in the Standard & Poor’s 500 would be listed in this index for an average of 12 years. New technologies, economic shocks, disruptive competitors and eventually the inability to identify and address future challenges are the main reasons for conditional sustainability.

If we correlate this with the contents of ISO 9001: 2015, then this translates into the culture and organizational knowledge about how the organization approaches Understanding the Context of the Organization and the Needs and Expectations of the Interested Parties. Additionally, the quality of the organization can be judged from the maturity of its systemic performance w.r.t. its intended outcomes in so far as effectiveness of organization’s actions to address the risks and opportunities.

In his article, The Top 10 Characteristics of a Healthy Organization, Rose Johnson describes characteristics ingrained in company culture, recognizing and understanding which helps in identifying potential problems and taking appropriate corrective actions to help remain afloat.

The article also refers to a good amount of additional material on the subject:

• Five Signs of a Good Organization
• Traits & Characteristics of an Effective Organization
• Common Traits of Successful Organizations
• American Express: Ten Signs of Unhealthy Company Culture
• University of Minnesota Duluth; Characteristics of a Healthy Organization; Katie Brunelle; 2004
• Businessweek; How Healthy Is Your Company?; Jack and Suzy Welch

We will now turn to our regular sections:

For the present episode we have picked up Jim Champy’s article When a Company Goes Astray @ Essential Management for Doers, Doubters and Darers column of Management Matters Network….while narrating some recent case studies, the author re-emphasizes the fundamental need for asking a right question.  More so when company has gone astray. He suggests four such questions:

• Does the Company’s Management Team Have the Skills and Appetite for Change?
• How Well do the Company’s Products or Services Respond to Market Needs?
• Has the Company Gone Far Enough with Digital?
• How Operationally Sound is the Company?

We now watch one of the latest ASQ TV  episodes:

• Why Continuous Improvement Teams Fail: In this episode, learn about continuous improvement teams: what they are, who should be on them, and what they should be doing.

Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems posting for September, 2018 is:

• Soft Skills are Underrated – Quality professionals need strong interpersonal skills. – Proficiency with the various quality tools and techniques is paramount for the quality professional to lead their organization to performance excellence. In the current environment, that’s just not enough to be truly successful…Professionals with poor interpersonal skills are generally not considered team players…Within the workplace, quality professionals with good interpersonal skills are likely to be more productive because they typically project a positive “can do” attitude, creatively uncover solutions to problems and proactively help others succeed. .. There are a host of interpersonal skills. For the sake of brevity I’ll list the ones some experts believe are among the more important: collaborative, dependable, tactful, friendly, empathetic, sensitivity, respectful, honest, trustful, helpful, communicative (verbal, written, non-verbal, listening), open-minded, positive and considerate…Reinventing oneself is possible through an awareness of how one interacts with others, but it does take a high degree of commitment and a lot of practice.
• Impulse Decisions – An impulse is nothing more than an urge to do something. It’s a suggestion from your subconscious that suddenly surfaces in your conscious mind, and as such, it deserves to be considered…Being impulsive is generally considered a negative trait. Impulsive people tend not to consider the consequences of their actions, think things through, or finish things they’ve started…However, it might sound strange but carrying impulses into action can be a good way to become goal-oriented…Don’t ignore all impulse decisions. Some will be game-changes, but pick and choose carefully.

I look forward to your inputs / criticisms/ observations to enhance the utility of our Quality Management Blog Carnival.

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

Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs – September, 2018

Welcome to September, 2018 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

In our present September, 2018 issue, we will expand the new principle –  Risk Based Auditing –  propounded in ISO 19011: 2018  We have found a few good articles on this subject from the field of financial auditing, too.

What is risk-based auditing? – Meaning, process and importance of risk-based auditing has presented the subject in a non-technical language.

Risk-based Auditing – Staying vigilant to change and risk is a top priority of good corporate governance and the internal audit function. In his latest InternalAuditor.org video blog, IIA President and CEO Richard Chambers discusses the risk-based audit approach, including three components of risk-based auditing and three strategies for monitoring risk.

Managing Risks in Management Systems Auditing Frameworks – Jacob McLean

ISO 19011: 2018 version now explicitly focuses on Risk-based auditing – or focusing audit effort on matters of significance to the management system.

Exploring the revised ISO 19011:2018 – Hope Kiwekete

• This time around, appreciation of the risk-based approach will essentially be a critical determinant when scheduling, conducting and reporting of audits.

This will prompt auditors to overcome the dilemma of hastily jumping into auditing without familiarising themselves with the means that management uses to control their functions.

• As shown in figure 1, clause 5.3: Determining and evaluating audit programme risks and opportunities, forms part of audit programme process.
• The planning of the audit (clause 6.3) also raises the bar up and makes use of high degree of professional judgement by the internal auditor now a very important attribute of the auditor.
• There has been a significant improvement on what constitutes essential competencies that management-systems’ auditors need to possess or acquire. Hence auditors need to continually upskill and remain relevant while adding value to their clients.

Incorporating Risk-Based Thinking into Internal Quality Audits for ISO 9001 – In this webinar by expert speaker Duke Okes will explain how to use risk-based thinking in the quality management system. You will get simple tools for assessing risks within a QMS process. Further, you will understand how to report audit nonconformities from a risk-based perspective.

We will now turn to our regular sections:

For the present episode we have picked up Jim Champy’s article Keeping it Simple

@ Essential Management for Doers, Doubters and Darers column of Management Matters Network….One of Peter Drucker’s great virtues was the simplicity with which he articulated management principles. For instance: he defined “strategy” as: (1) understand where your company is today; (2) where you want it to go; and (3) how you are going to get there. Here are some rules that spell importance of simplicity and directness in presenting ideas and communicating them to others:

1. Know what you’re talking about
2. Forget the jargon and code words
3. Own your ideas
4. Make your ideas real

We now watch one of the latest ASQ TV  episodes:

• Blockchain and Quality – One of the terms you often hear when discussing Quality 4.0 or Industry 4.0 is blockchain. Maybe its most well-known use currently is for bitcoin, the crypto-currency. But what is blockchain exactly and how does it, or will it, relate to the quality industry? Let’s take a look.

“Quality and Innovation with Blockchain Technology”, Software Quality Professional Magazine, 2017

“Blockchain for Supply Chain: Improving Transparency and Efficiency Simultaneously”, Software Quality Professional Magazine, 2018

• Digital Transformation – When we hear terms like Industry 4.0 and Quality 4.0, they may seem too broad for you and your organization to be able to take any specific action. Where do you start? One place to start is by doing what’s called a digital transformation.

Quality Experience Telemetry

Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems posting for August, 2018 is:

• Commit to Success – Success requires discipline, hard work, perseverance, tenacity, will, courage and faith. It’s the quality of their commitment that separates the good players from the great ones. People who are committed to success are willing to do whatever it takes, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. Everything they do reflects their commitment.
• Creativity – The mind is like any other muscle: the more we use it, the stronger it gets. Creativity is simply doing something differently. Bottom line, if we want to be more creative, all we have to do is increase our idea failure rate.

I look forward to your inputs / criticisms/ observations to enhance the utility of our Quality Management Blog Carnival.

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

Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs – April, 2018

Welcome to April, 2018 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

We have chosen – ISO 45001:2018 – as our base topic for discussion this month

After a pretty long wait, ISO 45001 is now published on 12^th March, 2018.

Here are a few videos that explain the key features of ISO 45001:2018:

ISO 45001:2018 Occupational Health and Safety Management System (OH&SMS)

ISO 45001 Simplified

ISO 45001:2018 Overview – Safety Management System

It would naturally be interesting to know how ISO 45001: 2018 stands as compared to OHSAS 18001:2007.  Detailed comparison of ISO 45001_2018 with OHSAS 18001_2007 and guidance-explanation notes on the changes is a summary of inputs from different sources to present all key information on the same page.

Making the migration from BS OHSAS 18001 to ISO/DIS 45001 lists the three top themes in ISO 45001:

1. Management commitment – Where 18001 took a reactive approach through delegation of hazard control responsibilities to safety management personnel, 45001 shifts this to a “leader”, or management, commitment coupled with workers’ participation, as demonstrated by a top down approach.
2. Worker Involvement – An important component of employee engagement is the removal of barriers and opening up visibility for workers to review audit findings and incident investigation outcomes.
3. Risks vs. Hazards – ISO 45001 prescribes a more proactive approach to early hazard identification and risk control. Internal audits, conducting pre-task risk assessments like JSAs and SWMS and workplace monitoring will become the new norm.

The currently OHSAS 18001 compliant organization shall have to migrate to ISO 45001 within 3 years from the publication of the new standard, i.e. by 12^th March, 2021 –

Migration to ISO 45001 – Transitioning to ISO 45001 – How to get started

Migration from OHSAS 18001 to ISO 45001

PECB have some excellent videos regarding:

ISO 45001 Key Implementation Steps

and

Using ISO 45001 to Achieve Excellence in OH&S Management and Performance.

For more updated information the recommended sources are:

• ISO’s web site www.iso.org
• ISO’s dedicated microsite at: https://spotlight.iso.org/iso45001, and
• The ISO/PC 283 web site, https://committee.iso.org/pc283

We will now turn to our regular sections:

For the present episode we have picked up Paul Niven’s article The First Law of Creating OKRs @ Measurement-Driven Management column of Management Matters Network…. No matter how much you hope and try, OKRs cannot overcome a lack of strategic understanding on the part of employees. In fact, the opposite is true, hence the title of this article.

We now watch one of the latest ASQ TV  episodes:

• Living the Tiny House Lifestyle – Karen Chaudiere describes how she and her husband are building a tiny house and transitioning to an entirely new lifestyle. Watch this Quality for Life story.
• New Competencies for the Quality Professional – Pat La Londe and Liz Keim oversaw research into the future of the quality professional. In this episode, the ASQ past chairs discuss new competencies quality professionals must have to stay relevant as leaders for employers and clients.

Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems postings for March, 2018 are:

Focus: In today’s world, no matter the culture in which we live, most of us are presented with a multitude of options. Being presented with so many options can be perplexing and, at times, overwhelming…The confusion of so many options will largely disappear once we know how to focus. In this sense, focusing relates to clarity…Concentrating attention on something specific, whether it be an event, problem or person, we summon all our energies to bear on it; thereby, it shuts out irrelevant or insignificant details…This technique will work even if we find ourselves caught in a crisis, where our attention seems to be demanded everywhere at once. Remember one of life’s truisms. Our experience in life is determined by where and upon what we choose to focus our attention and energy, just as a photographer must decide on where to focus the lens and what to leave out. If we let our attention wander, we’ll be confused and fuzzy, just like the picture that results from a lens that is not held still.

I look forward to your inputs / criticisms/ observations to enhance the utility of our Quality Management Blog Carnival.

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

Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs – December, 2016

Welcome to December, 2016 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

We have already taken up the following topics for the familiarization of different elements of new version of ISO 9001-

• December, 2015: the changes in the Revision of ISO 9001 (:2015)
• January, 2016: Process Approach in 9001:2015
• February, 2016: Risk-Based Thinking in 9001:2015
• March, 2016: Risk-Based Thinking – a general perspective
• April, 2016: Context of the Organization in ISO 9001: 2015
• May, 2016: The Relevant Interested Parties
• June, 2016: Leadership and Commitment.
• July, 2016 : ‘Leadership’ in the Other ISO Management Standards
• August,2016 : Change Management
• September, 2016 : Organizational Knowledge
• October, 2016 : Control of Human Errors
• November, 2016 : Auditing

For the present episode we will take a brief look at The Road beyond ISO 9001:2015.

Role as a Management Tool

• In How to establish strategic approach to ISO 9001:2015, Muhamed Faroouque charts out how well defined objectives can result in to enhanced business performance by following ISO 9001:2015.
• ISO 9001 As a Business Management Tool – Oscar Combs –  Management teams that want to increase efficiency, customer satisfaction, and profitability, but rarely tap into the real power of ISO 9001.
• Quality Management and Job Quality: How the ISO 9001 standard for quality management systems affects employers and employees – David I Levine, Michael W Toffel – This study relates to data of later half of the first decade of the millennium, and hence is useful in drawing the lessons of what good practices ISO 9001 compliant organizations seem to have adopted, in so far as our present subject is concerned.
• In Beyond ISO 9001 : Benefits to SMEs Dinesh Kakkad describes how organizations can go beyond mere ISO implementation, and adopt other Management tools, techniques, Management philosophies, Quality Award criteria and improve.
• REACH Beyond Zero is Stork’s catalyst to impact thinking, provide direction and to stimulate action for positive and lasting change at Stork via HSSEQ route.

The business performance has several dimensions. One can delve deeper into ISO 901: 2015 and can find ways and means to link up the standard with each of this business dimension. However, within the bounds of our present post, we will cover only a few selected examples that would serve as cases of illustration.

Role in The Strategy:

• The Business of Innovation – Use ISO 9001:2015 to build innovation into your business strategy – There are still people who carry with them the outdated ideas of the standard and only think linearly… The updated ISO 9001:2015 requirements, more specifically “Leadership” (Clause 5), “Risk Based Thinking” (Clause 6) and “Context of the Organization” (Clause 4), have many components linking QMS standards to business management systems, leadership involvement, and strategic planning that were not previously required. The newly required alignment involves the entire organization, a more comprehensive approach to improved performance, process, and quality…
• Harnessing Quality and Standards as a Business Strategy – Quality and standards are fast becoming strategic business imperatives in a rapidly evolving global economy. Learn how three local companies adopted standards to help them build trust, enhance their brand image and stay ahead of the competition.

• What Do We Mean by Quality? – Gregory H. Watson – Today there is a need to consider quality from a companywide perspective. Japanese call this “big Q” as Total Quality or Company Wide Quality. “Quality as strategy” positions a way to efficiently, effectively and economically deliver value externally from an organization,
• Implementation of Quality Management System ISO 9001 in the World and its Strategic Necessity contains several useful references for further study.

Role in Business Process Management

• Business Process Management and ISO Standards Alignment –Forrest Breyfogle – The Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) system provides a nine-step methodology for structurally integrating BPM and ISO. Over 300 free articles, recorded webinars, and videos are available about the IEE system, predictive performance reporting, Lean Six Sigma techniques, and how to execute improvement efforts so that the enterprise as a whole benefits.
• ISO 9000: A Springboard for BPM –  Sam Anbazhagan  – Now with BPM emerging as an IT enabled Management and a recognition that companies that adopted the ISO 9000 standard are in a better position to adopt BPM, there seems to be a need to take a renewed look at this standard. The article presents a practitioner’s view of what this standard means.
• Achieving ISO 9001:2015 with Business Process Management (BPM) – Emma Harris – There are a great number of quality systems which deliver a Business Process Management approach and which one the organization chooses will depend on your objectives for ISO 9001:2015. For more detail on this, please read the article: The Top 10 things your Quality Management System (QMS) must deliver

Role in Financial Domain-related Issues:

• Financial Impact of Quality Remains a Question: – “From how organizations use quality to drive profitability, to how quality is governed, organizations are becoming more proactive at using quality to drive organizational success.” – Global State of Quality 2 Research: Discoveries 2016 states.
• Quantifying the Financial Benefits of Quality – Holly Lyke-Ho-Gland observes that by quantifying the financial value of its effort, quality function can rise to the status of the strategic partner of the business operations.

Role in Sustainability:

• Connecting Sustainability to ISO Certification – Baskar Kotte  – This article addresses certain concepts of sustainability and how such concepts can be fully implemented with available disciplined tools such as ISO standards.
• Why implementing ISO 9001 is integral to business sustainability –  A detailed report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research found that “effective application of QM procedures provide an important foundation for future business success and can attribute to an increase in share price, profit revenue and customer retention as well as employee, customer and user satisfaction.”
• ISO has published an International Standard – ISO 22301- addressing business continuity management to contribute making organizations in both public and private sectors more resilient. ISO 22301:2012, Societal security – Business continuity management systems – Requirements, will help organizations, regardless of their size, location or activity, to be better prepared and more confident to handle disruption of any type.

Role in CSR domain:

• Sarbanes – Oxley Act – Threat or opportunity for Quality professionals is a succinct treatise for CSR and Quality professionals to work in unison.
• Leveraging ISO 9001 system to Sarbanes-Oxley compliance – Maureen McAllister – ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 are not financially focused. However, their systems, procedures and practices offer a ready-made platform to help demonstrate SOx compliance. ISO standards provide a vehicle for ongoing risk assessment and management. Their internal auditing requirements back up these procedures and assessments with cross checks that ensure proper practices are actually being followed. These standards can put some real teeth into SOx-required attestations about internal controls.
• A Pathway to ‘CSR Excellence’: the roles of ISO 9000 and ISO 26000 – The paper discusses the roles of ISO 9000 and ISO 26000 quality and social responsibility standards in a journey toward Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Excellence.  ISO 9000 plays the role as an operational building block and the ISO 26000 that of a tool to review strategic positioning and operational maturity of organisations.
• ISO standards for business – An essential link to integrated reporting  – Kevin McKinley 2011 –  Business cannot focus only on satisfying direct customers’ needs – stakeholders in all their forms are becoming more critical of businesses that do not adequately address expectations of good governance, environmental stewardship, sustainability and social responsibility…Standards deal not only with topical business issues, but can also provide rules and guidance for assessing how related business requirements are implemented. Such conformity assessment standards can provide benefits to all links in the value chain.

With this, we will conclude our current series of articles on ISO 9001: 2015 and the articles on elements of QMS that we had been pursuing in previous two years as well.

I plan to revert back to our original model of reviewing the articles/ blogposts on the current topics related to quality and /or quality management from January 2017.

We will now turn to our regular sections:

ASQ CEO, Bill Troy in his ASQ’s Influential Voice  in conjunction with ASQ Communications introduces Belur Nanjundiah Jagadeesh Prasad. Jadesh Prasad has applied his knowledge of quality creatively by composing several quality themed poems.

We now watch two of the latest ASQ TV  episode:

• Economic Criteria for Enhancing Measuring System Analysis: All organizations need healthy and up-to-date systems for measurement. Elinaldo Barbosa de Araújo, Quality Assurance Executive and Speaker, Embraco, discusses the economic impact of measuring uncertainty and how to make decisions to improve your systems.
• RACI Engages Staff in Improvement Initiatives : Russell Keenan, describes how the RACI tool is effective. [RACI is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed.]
• FMEA and Sensitivity Analysis: Eugene Bukowski, Senior Engineering Manager, GE Healthcare, describes sensitivity analysis, a new approach to determining and prioritizing failure modes. Bukowski also names some of the common failure modes and discusses risk priority number.
• Change to Lean Six Sigma Helps Manufacturer Reap Benefits: Dumidu Ranaweera, Head of Organizational Excellence/Executive Master Black Belt, Premium Vegetable Oils Sdn Bhd., discusses how his organization changed systems to adopt LSS and the tools they now use to keep improving.
• 2017 ASQ World Conference on Quality and Improvement: 97% of 2016 attendees said they would recommend this conference to a friend or colleague.  Watch to learn what you can expect from the 2017 World Conference on Quality and Improvement.

Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems for the month of November, 2016:

6 Rules for Improved Standards : Standards can be a part of continuous improvement efforts, with a few key rules that should be considered when working with internal documents or external standards.. Bottom line, we should encourage everyone to get involved in making standards the best they can be. It can really be a rewarding task to do because standardization is a significant component of an organization’s continuous improvement initiatives.

Clarifying Consensus, Surveys and Polls: How do we really know what people think? In trying to find out, there’s a lot of confusion created. Some of the confusion is intentional, some confusion is an unawareness of fundamental math, some of the confusion is created by a lack of understanding of what data is telling us, or maybe just simple lack of knowledge of how to collect the information.

I look forward to your active participation in enriching the blog carnival as we pursue our journey in exploring the happenings across quality management blogs…………

With best wishes for a very happy, healthy and meaningful 2017…

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

Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs – November, 2016

Welcome to November, 2016 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

We have already taken up the following topics for the familiarisation of different elements of new version of ISO 9001-

• December, 2015: the changes in the Revision of ISO 9001 (:2015)
• January, 2016: Process Approach in 9001:2015
• February, 2016: Risk-Based Thinking in 9001:2015
• March, 2016: Risk-Based Thinking – a general perspective
• April, 2016: Context of the Organization in ISO 9001: 2015
• May, 2016: The Relevant Interested Parties
• June, 2016: Leadership and Commitment.
• July, 2016 : ‘Leadership’ in the Other ISO Management Standards
• August,2016 : Change Management
• September, 2016 : Organizational Knowledge
• October, 2016 : Control of Human Errors

For the present episode we will take an overview of Auditing.

Transition to ISO 9001:2015. What will the auditor ask? – Generally, when something changes, that will be what the auditor is going to focus on; the vindictive auditor will try and catch you out, to show they know more than you, and make themselves look good. The professional auditor will focus on the continual improvement approach and appreciate that management systems change and improve over time.

What Is Auditing?  – An audit can apply to an entire organization or might be specific to a function, process, or production step. Find more information in the video, The How and Why of Auditing wherein auditing expert and ASQ fellow Dennis Arter shares tips and advice for auditors and auditees.

The Positives and Pitfalls of Auditing Checklists  – Every auditing course you go on, every book you read about auditing, and every standard that’s been written essentially all say the same thing ­– if you audit you should use a checklist! Now that’s all good and fine, but there are some things to be aware of. The article goes on to explain the good and some of the pitfalls of checklists and then recommends some ways to address them.

Audits that See Below the Surface Evaluate Internal Controls – Peter Chatel draws up a very speaking line that can enable to evaluate the effectiveness of the internal controls in place, that include among other things:
• Defined responsibilities, accountabilities, authority and authorization
• Separation of Duties
• Policies, Programs and Procedures
• Personnel Experience and Development
• Protective Measures
• Internal Verification
• Documentation

Explaining E-Audits: A Method for Remotely Conducting Audits – Auditing expert Shauna Wilson explains how organizations can use e-auditing to remotely audit. Learn how this approach can lead to more efficient audits and what factors organizations must consider when implementing e-audits.

We have collected a few from slew of videos on the subject:

How to survive an ISO Audit

Quality Audit Preparation

What Not to Say during an ISO Audit Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

We will now take up a few ISO 9001:2015-centric articles and videos.

The Most Important Audit Questions for ISO 9001:2015 – By Craig Cochran, Project Manager, Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership (GaMEP) at Georgia Tech – ISO 9001:2015 includes a lot of new requirements that have never been part of most audits. In order to expedite your thinking, these are what I believe to be the most important audit questions for ISO 9001:2015.

ISO 9001:2015 – The great leap forward for auditors! – It brings new challenges for auditors to apply their competencies and also brings great opportunity to accomplish their audits.

Objective Auditing Meets ISO 9001:2015 – How auditors can help organizations understand context and risk – Inderjit Arora  – Auditors must also understand how the context of an organization relates to quality management principles. If they do, then they will look for conformities in the management system to ISO 9001:2015 requirements. If during this audit they do find nonconformities based on requirements,

Auditing to ISO 9001:2015 – This presentation has spelt out what is required to be audited w.r.t. ISO 9001: 2015.

How the Auditors View ISO 9001-2015

Internal Auditing, an important type of audit, is seen to be in a different perspective, particularly in view of the structural changes in ISO 9001: 2015.

The Internal Auditing of Management Systems – Graham W Parker – Providing evidence for and confirmation of the confidence that operations are consistent, under control. Effective and efficient, is the primary role of auditing – by looking to the evidences to the contrary.

Preparing for ISO 9001: 2015 using your QMS – Part 5: Internal Audits – The subsection 9.2.2 goes on to be more detailed. Instead of “an audit program shall be planned, taking into consideration the status and importance…”, the new text includes, in part, “…the organization shall: a) plan, establish, implement and maintain an audit program(s)…which shall take into consideration the quality objectives, the importance of the processes concerned, customer feedback, changes impacting on the organization…”. The results of previous audits are also to be considered per the current requirement.

Five Main Steps in ISO 9001 Internal Audit  – If used properly, the Internal Audit, instead of being a “necessary evil,” can be one of the biggest contributors toward process improvement in the QMS.

And here are a few video clips related to internal auditing:

Understanding ISO 9001:2015: Internal audits

Meet the Internal Auditor

When I Say Internal Auditor, You Think

Internal Audit – Mastering ISO 9001:2015

7 Deadly Internal Audit Sins

Internal Auditing – A Love Story

How to Succeed as an Internal Auditor

Internal Auditing: A Career for Today, A Career for Tomorrow

Before we end our present discussion, here is one poser – Why Would you Want to be an Auditor?

For the concluding episode in this series, in December, 2016, we will take up The Road beyond ISO 9001:2015.

We will now turn to our regular sections:

ASQ CEO, Bill Troy in his ASQ’s Influential Voice has an interesting article as well: Interview With The Creator of Mr. Pareto Head, which is an absorbing interview with Mike Crossen, the creator of the Mr. Pareto Head comic strip. How a hard-core engineer finds humor in quality and how Mr. Pareto Head came to be has many other lessons for professional as well as personal lives. Meet “Mr. Pareto Head”

We now watch two of the latest ASQ TV  episode:

• Around the World on a Bicycle, with Quality: While some of us only dream about quitting our jobs and traveling around the world, Sunil Kaushik did it. Kaushik, a Six Sigma trainer and consultant based in India, left his job to cycle the globe and teach quality along the way.
• Gemba Walks Improve Process, Communication, and Culture: Eileen Serrano, Business Optimization Expert, Roche, describes the process her organization went through to establish daily Gemba Walks and how its culture has changed for the better.
• Quality Memes: In social media lingo, a “meme” is a photo, video or idea that becomes extremely popular online. What better way to promote World Quality Month this November than to share quality-themed “memes”?
• World Quality Month: Quality is about reliability, improvement and …fun? That’s right! During World Quality Month in November, meet a quality cartoonist and a man who’s sharing quality tools while cycling around the globe. Plus, learn how you can use social media to make quality jobs, tools and concepts accessible to the community beyond quality professionals. Sunil Kaushik’s Travel Blog: www.trainntrot.com World Quality Month Website: www.worldqualitymonth.org

Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems for the month of October, 2016:

• Leadership’s Five Key Practices: All quality professionals must practice leadership skills to add value – In order to demonstrate these skills, look for opportunities that surround you every day. Do not wait for someone to ‘call your name.’ Be aware of what’s happening in your organization, raise your hand, and seize those opportunities. Start small but think big. After all, you have much to gain and little to lose.
• Make IT Happen: You have to get yourself going, sort through all the noise and complexity, roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty, and make it happen!

I look forward to your active participation in enriching the blog carnival as we pursue our journey in exploring the happenings across quality management blogs…………

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

Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs – October, 2016

Welcome to October, 2016 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

We have already taken up the following topics for the familiarisation of different elements of new version of ISO 9001-

• December, 2015: the changes in the Revision of ISO 9001 (:2015)
• January, 2016: Process Approach in 9001:2015
• February, 2016: Risk-Based Thinking in 9001:2015
• March, 2016: Risk-Based Thinking – a general perspective
• April, 2016: Context of the Organization in ISO 9001: 2015
• May, 2016: The Relevant Interested Parties
• June, 2016: Leadership and Commitment.
• July, 2016 : ‘Leadership’ in the Other ISO Management Standards
• August,2016 : Change Management
• September, 2016 : Organizational Knowledge

For the present episode we will look at Control of Human Errors in general, and then move over to how that can possibly be addressed in the implementation ISO 9001: 2015.

Human Errors have been well addressed in the past in the literature relating to fields like safety management or health & medical services management. We have picked up a few representative articles here:

Human Error: Causes and Control – by George A. Peters, Barbara J. Peters –  Detailed, practical, and broad in scope, the book explores the field of human error, including its identification, its probable cause, and how it can be reasonably controlled or prevented.

Human factors: Managing human failures – The challenge is to develop error tolerant systems and to prevent errors from initiating; to manage human error proactively it should be addressed as part of the risk assessment process, where:

• Significant potential human errors are identified,
• Those factors that make errors more or less likely are identified (such as poor design, distraction, time pressure, workload, competence, morale, noise levels and communication systems) – Performance Influencing Factors (PIFs)
• Control measures are devised and implemented, preferably by redesign of the task or equipment

Reducing Human Error on the Manufacturing Floor By Ginette M. Collazo, PhD.– When we investigate quality events, the focus of those investigations rely on explaining what happened in the process and how the product was affected. A human error usually explains the reason for the occurrence of the deviation; nevertheless, the reason for that error remains unexplained and consequently the corrective and preventive actions fail to address the underlying conditions for that failure… Real CAPA effectiveness will be achieved when the number of deviations decreases. not when particular events fail to reoccur.

Minimising human errors in the workplace – Eric Joost – Familiarization with the risks can make an employee feel more comfortable about cutting corners and designing their own way of working, which increases the probability of something going wrong.

As can be expected, not much literature is available yet on this subject w.r.t. its impact in ISO 9001:2015. From what could be searched within reasonable efforts, I have picked up:

Struggling Against Nature – Preventing Human Error in the new ISO 9001 2015 Standard is ppt that was presented by Matt Leiphart at 2016 ISO World Congress and takes a different path in evaluating the requirement.

ISO 9001:2015 Human Factors – Shaun Sayers thinks this requirement, no matter how noble in its intent, is practically unenforceable. My guess is that this will actually be ignored….. (he also) can’t help thinking that the standard might have been better if the aim to prevent human error was also included in the Nonconformity and corrective action clause – ISO 9001:2015 Clause 10.2 – too.

Before the jury is out to come to a verdict on the subject, it would be prudent to wait for some more time and allow fairly large number of organizations to implement the new version to really start detecting some strong trends.

In the meanwhile let us also look at a few interesting video clips:

Human Factors in the Clinical Laboratory: Lessons from Aviation Safety – Patrick Mendenhall, BS

Quality Systems: Managing Human Error and CAPA Effectiveness

Quality Systems: Managing Human Error and CAPA Effectiveness

How Many Ways Can I Screw Up Causes of Human Error

How Many Ways Can I Screw Up Causes of Human Error

Human Error: Human error is inevitable, but you can do a lot to prevent mistakes

Human Reliability Improvement: Reducing Documentation Errors

For the November, 2016 episode, we will take up Auditing in the new versions of these management standards.

We will now turn to our regular sections:

ASQ CEO, Bill Troy in his ASQ’s Influential Voice in October Roundtable takes up ‘How can employers leverage quality to invite innovation?’. The discussion is indeed engrossing while being as simple as it can be.

We now watch two of the latest ASQ TV  episode:

• ISO 9001 Check-in – Standards experts explain key changes to ISO 9001:2015, such as how to understand the term ‘documented information,’ the role of leadership and the emphasis on risk-based thinking. Learn why using some quality tools to demonstrate risk-based thinking might not meet the standard’s requirements.  – To Document, or Not To Document? Standards Connection subscription page Leaders of Change Prove It
• Integrating Management Systems – In this episode of ASQ TV, we will discuss how Annex SL can help ease the complexity of integrating multiple standards, and the steps your organization should take to become integrated. – Quality Progress Article Integrated Management Systems
• Using the Knowledge Interest Survey – Scott Laman, Senior Manager, Quality Engineering and Risk Management, Vascular Division, Teleflex, Inc., explains how the knowledge interest survey allows you to choose appropriate mentors, successors and potentially future high achievers.
• Using the Critical-to-Quality Tree – Chris McMillan, Senior Corporate Performance Analyst, City of Fayetteville, North Carolina, discusses the use of this tool to explain performance measurements to staff outside of the traditional quality department and how the city government is going about introducing quality throughout its systems.
• Using Quality Tools for a More Organized Life – Daniel Zrymiak describes how he uses quality tools to make his life more organized, in the Quality for Life series story.

Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems for the month of September, 2016:

• Statisticians Must Transform – Like other quality professionals, statisticians must add value – In this enlightened age, statisticians and non-statisticians realize tools don’t make improvements, leaders do. To become leaders, statisticians must first understand the basic change that has taken place in the way work is done and grasp how that change demands a clear understanding of the difference between managing work and leading people.
• Now is Your Time to Act – all sorts of new and meaningful happenings await your choice to take action in order for them to come to life.

I look forward to your active participation in enriching the blog carnival as we pursue our journey in exploring the happenings across quality management blogs…………

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

Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs – August, 2016

Welcome to August, 2016 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

We have already taken up the following topics for the familiarization of different elements of new version of ISO 9001-

• December, 2015: the changes in the Revision of ISO 9001 (:2015)
• January, 2016: Process Approach in 9001:2015
• February, 2016: Risk-Based Thinking in 9001:2015
• March, 2016: Risk-Based Thinking – a general perspective
• April, 2016: Context of the Organization in ISO 9001: 2015
• May, 2016: The Relevant Interested Parties
• June, 2016: Leadership and Commitment.
• July, 2016 : ‘Leadership’ in the Other ISO Management Standards

For the present episode we will look at Change Management, in general, then move over to what ISO 9001: 2015 has to state on the subject, ending the present discussion with how two other major management system standards also look at the subject.

Before we closely look at the subject of change in the ISO management system standards, let us quickly recapitulate a broader view of the subject and look at some randomly selected picks from the vast literature available on the subject on the internet.

Adaptive HVM Ltd.’s Change Management process has 5 key phases

Torben Rick’s blog on his website Meliorate, we find a full section dealing with is posts on change management. We have picked up four among these ones here:

Top 20+ awesome quotes on change management: Here are a couple of representative ones:

The key to change …… is to let go of fear – Rosanne Cash

People don’t resist change. They resist being changed! – Peter Senge

Top 12 reasons why people resist change. Again a pick at some:

Misunderstanding about the need for change/when the reason for the change is unclear

Fear of the unknown

Poor communication

Top 12 change management comic strips has quite a representative messages delivered through the medium of cartoon strips —

Organizations don’t change. People do – or they don’t

Change Management Iceberg

The change management iceberg suggested by Wilfried Kruger emphasizes that manager mainly consider the hard issues for change i.e. cost, quality and time. These issues represent only the tip of iceberg i.e. only about 10% of the total issues.

Most of the issues – soft issues – are below the surface.

Change affects 4 types of people in the organization:

• Promoters – People those who support the change
• Potential promoters – People who may support change when fully convinced
• Opponents – People against change
• Hidden opponents – People who appear to support change but secretly are against it.

Therefore attitudes – perceptions and beliefs, and behavior – power and politics, need to be managed.

There is additional related material too:

• Change Behavior Ajzen
• Change Dimensions Pettigrew Whipp
• Change Phases Kotter
• Change of Units and Variables
• Change Control

We also have picked up a few videos as well:

Overcoming Resistance to Change – Isn’t It Obvious? – The World with Theory of Constraints

Management of Change vs Change Management  – Life Cycle Engineering

How to Lead Change Management – DeAnne Aguirre, senior partner with Strategy&Buisness

Change Management vs. Change Leadership — What’s the Difference? – Dr. John Kotter

Kotter’s 8-Step Organizational Change Model – Steven Thomsen

How to Conduct a Management of Change (MOC) – Baker Hughes

We now move over to a closer look at how ISO Management System Standards address the subject:

5 Practices for Managing Change When ISO 9001:2015 Arrives – Terrance Holbrook, Senior Product Manager, MasterControl – While there is no single one-size-fits-all change management methodology, there are established practices that can be adopted and customized to better manage change and cultivate opportunity.

1. Accept the change
2. Communicate change
3. Engage employees
4. Provide adequate training
5. Introduce change gradually

ISO 9001:2015 Addressing Change : Once the organization has identified its context and interested parties and then identified the processes that support this linkage, addressing changes becomes an increasingly important component of continued success.

How change management is addressed in ISO 9001 2015 Standard? – Any change – may be it is in process, manpower, machinery, instruments, technology, raw materials, suppliers, customer requirements, legal requirements etc.…. shall be go through a defined change management process.

Change Management and ISO 9001:2015 – Raghu Malayanuru has described in details clauses of ISO 9001:2015 that focus on change management. For the purpose of maintaining brevity of our episode, we have listed out the clauses here:

1. Clause 4.4.1( g);
2. Clause 5.3 (e);
3. Clause 6.3
4. Clause 7.5.3.2
5. Clause 8.1;
6. Clause 8.2.1 (b);
7. Clause 8.2.4
8. Clause 8.3.6;
9. Clause 8.5.6;
10. Clause 9.2.2 (a)
11. Clause 9.3.2 (b)
12. Clause 10
13. Clause 10.2.1(f)

The essence is captured here:

ISO’s Technical Committee no.176, Sub-committee no.2 (ISO/TC 176/SC 2) has also published an explanatory paper – How Change is addressed within ISO 9001:2015

How to manage changes in an ISMS according to ISO 27001 A.12.1.2 – Antonio Segovia states that the requirement exists, but there are no particular instructions on how to implement the control (i.e., Change procedure is not a mandatory document), so in this article he suggests one of the ways to manage changes.

What is “Management of Change?” – Thea Dunmire explains requirements related to management of change were added in section 4.3.1 of OHSAS 18001: 2007…In addition, reference to Management of Change was also included in section 4.4.6.

These new requirements cover four important concepts:

• Identification of the hazards associated with “change”
• Assessment of the risks associated with “change”
• Consideration of OH&S hazards and risks prior to the introduction of the “change”
• Implementation of the controls needed to address the hazards and risks associated with the “change”

For purposes of management of change within an OH&S management system, the changes that need to be addressed include:

• Organizational changes (e.g. personnel or staffing changes)
• Activity changes (e.g. changes to processes, equipment, infrastructure, software)
• Material changes (e.g. new chemicals, packaging)
• Changes to the OH&S management system (e.g. procedures)

Ineffective management of change is one of the major contributing factors in many of the incident investigations conducted by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB).  To check it out, go to the CSB web site at http://www.csb.gov  and enter “management of change” as your search term at the link “Search this Site.”

Change Management in ISO 14001:2015 – Ivana Strgacic states that unlike the changes in ISO 9001:2015, there is no “Planning of Changes” section.  So where can we find change management in the new standard?

The change all starts with the environmental aspects,

“When determining environmental aspects, the organization shall take into account: a) change, including planned or new developments, and new or modified activities, products and services;”

Once we identify the changed aspects, then there is a cascading or domino effect on the rest of the environmental management system.

While maintaining processes, it needs to underlined that some of the triggers that will result in a change to a process are:

• changes to aspects,
• changes to compliance obligations,
• changes to controls.

Management review (element 9.3) requires the specific inputs of change into the process.  Specifically changes in:

• external and internal issues that are relevant to the environmental management system,
• the needs and expectations of interested parties, including compliance obligations,
• its significant environmental aspects,
• risks and opportunities.

The resulting output includes decisions related to any need for changes to the environmental management system systems, including resources.  Without managing change, the EMS cannot remain effective.  Change, through maintenance and continual improvement of the management systems, are the core tenets of the Plan-Do-Check-Act model.

We rest our discussions on the today’s topic here.

For the September, 2016 episode, we will take Organizational Knowledge in the new versions of these management standards.

We will now turn to our regular sections:

Among several update posts by ASQ CEO, Bill Troy in his ASQ’s Influential Voice we have picked up two ‘author interviews’ for our current episode:

• In Author Interview: The ISO 9001:2015 Implementation Handbook, Milt Dentch, author of The ISO 9001:2015 Implementation Handbook, clarifies some changes from the 2008 revision, explains his take on risk-based thinking, and shares what he envisions future revisions of the standard to include.
• In Author Interview: Making Change in Complex Organizations, George Strodtbeck, Vice President with the consulting firm SBTI, where he is responsible for strategic account management and providing expert change management advice, shares his thoughts on what it takes for organizations to handle change successfully in his book Making Change in Complex Organizations,.

It should be interesting to revisit one of the HBR classics, by Francesca Gino and Bradley Staats on the subject: Why Organizations don’t learn?

We now watch two of the latest ASQ TV  episodes that deal with ISO 9001: 2015:

• Change Management – Change management experts discuss key steps to consider when approaching employees with change and helping them through the process. Learn about the carrot-and-stick technique—which can be used to motivate employees—and a tool that can make meetings more efficient and keep change management plans on track.

Read Sunil Kaushik’s Quality Progress article regarding the carrot-and-stick method as well as additional motivational strategies.
Watch the full interview and read the Quality Progress article about the Joint Commission’s improvement initiatives.

• Explaining Annex SL and Top Management’s New Roles – Annex SL is considered the common language and text that new ISO standards are being built around. John DiMaria, senior product manager at BSI Americas, discusses how this affects ISO 9001:2015, as well as the standard’s new roles for top management with regard to responsibility, objectives and compliance.

Here are two more which also are very interesting points of view in understanding the present scenario:

• Quality in India – This episode takes a look at quality in India, from the perspectives of leaders at the Quality Council of India (QCI) and the National Accreditation Board for Education and Training.
• The State of Quality in India in 2015 – What’s the state of quality in India in 2015? Dr. Himanshu Trivedi, chair of ASQ’s local member community in Ahmedabad, India, reflects.

In Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems for the month of May, 2016, we have –

• How to Get Leadership Support : Without it, good initiatives are doomed from the start.

Key management support, or lack of support, manifests itself in many ways. One way is that mid-lower level management won’t get on board so initiatives encounter all sorts of hurdles; therefore, results don’t generally live up to expectations. .. Additionally less support for quality initiatives usually results in underfunding and cuts in resources. So what do you do.. (Please read on the article)..

I look forward to your active participation in enriching the blog carnival as we pursue our journey in exploring the happenings across quality management blogs…………

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