Tag: Future of Quality

Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs – August 2021

Welcome to August 2021 edition of the IXth volume of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

We recapitulate that the 2021 theme for the IXth volume of our Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs is Future of… as the basis for Creating and Maintaining Sustained Success.

Our topic for the discussion for the month is – The Future of Quality – Management – Profession.

Past is rear-view of the driving a vehicle, present the dashboard and future is the windshield. For safe and effective driving all the three views have their own role to play.

The paper, Quality: past, present and future, published by Chartered Quality Institute (CQI), essentially, addresses the concepts and approaches the way the quality profession worked and that have inspired its thinking, as well the trends that can be observed currently to look at the future where man and technology can work together. The focus of quality is set to expand to include quality of life, which is best reflected in what Edward de Bono said, “the quality of our thinking will determine the quality of our future”.

The concept of “quality” has evolved to mean far more than the integrity of a manufactured product. Quality now represents a philosophy, a system of methodologies and practices, and an ongoing commitment to business excellence that encompasses all issues – and engages all individuals – within an organization…..The challenge for quality managers moving into the future is largely about allowing for change in a field that relies on constants. While so much attention today is paid to the bottom line, quality has a profound impact on the top line as well –remaining fluid to recognize, respond to and anticipate customer wants and needs to drive satisfaction and loyalty – a focus that grounds the future firmly in the concepts taught by the original quality leaders over 60 years ago.[1]

The five research themes of the Quality 2030 agenda together with the positive core of QM[2]
The focus of quality will have to shift from the quality tools to the overall business success…. to lead organizational change from the macro level…with the help of business models free of foreseeable risk and committed to business excellence at all levels.[3]

Further reading:

We will now turn to our regular sections:

We now watch ASQ TV, wherein we refresh our viewpoints about–

Mentioned in this episode:

Principles of the Quality of Cost

Executive Guide to Applying Cost of Quality

SSF Cost of Quality Calculator

We have taken up one article from Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems this month

  • The Career Path to Success May Not be Linear – Our mental models for how we comprehend the world of business matter shape how we think and what is possible. However, the vertical corporate ladder is becoming an artifact, as the world and how we work continues to evolve…The book, “The Corporate Lattice: Achieving High Performance in the Changing World of Work,” by Cathy Benko and Molly Anderson. authors outline the changing world of work and introduces what they called the corporate lattice. Unlike the linear ladder, the multi-dimensional lattice is more adaptive and replaces the vertical, one-directional model with one that can be described as a “zig zag” or multi-directional career path….The enlightened (lattice) organizations support rewarding professional experiences, providing better career-life fit for employees, and results in greater agility….While it may not necessarily be immediately financially rewarding, employees, and not just those viewed as high potential, gain experience and position themselves to move up when the opportunity presents itself.

‘From the Editor’ (of Quality Magazine) – by Darryl Sealand, we have Ego or Progress? –  The three American billionaires’ trips into the outer space have been frequently dubbed nothing more than the competition between, and placation of, the massive egos of these three billionaires… However, over a longer time span and a broader perspective, the idea of technology that starts out benefitting one industry or sector and finding its way to being useful in another is not uncommon, and not uncommon to the quality sector.

I look forward to your views / comments / inputs to further enrich the theme of Future of… as the basis for 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] Quality Management: Then, Now and Toward the Future

[2] Quality 2030: quality management for the future

[3] The Future of Quality Management is Business Management by Tom Taormina

Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs – February, 2021

Welcome to February 2021 edition of the IXth volume of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

We recapitulate that the 2021 theme for the IXth volume of our Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs is Future of… as the basis for Creating and Maintaining Sustained Success.

Presently, we will take up a McKinsey article, The next normal arrives: Trends that will define 2021—and beyond – By Kevin Sneader and Shubham Singhal to provide us a broad over view.

Excerpts from the article:

Quote:

There is at least a faint light at the end of the tunnel—along with the hope that another train isn’t heading our way….

Barring any unexpected catastrophes, individuals, businesses, and society can start to look forward to shaping their futures rather than just grinding through the present. The next normal is going to be different. It will not mean going back to the conditions that prevailed in 2019. Indeed, just as the terms “prewar” and “postwar” are commonly used to describe the 20th century, generations to come will likely discuss the pre-COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 eras…

The crisis has sparked a wave of innovation and launches a generation of entrepreneurs. …There’s no going back. The great acceleration in the use of technology, digitization, and new forms of working is going to be sustained.

Supply chains re-balance and shift

Think of it as “just in time plus.” The “plus” stands for “just in case,” meaning more sophisticated risk management. …When a single country or even a single factory went dark, the lack of critical components shut down production. Never again, executives vowed…. Once businesses began to study how their supply chains worked, they realized three things. First, disruptions aren’t unusual. Second, cost differences among developed and many developing countries are narrowing. In manufacturing, companies that adopt Industry 4.0 principles (meaning the application of data, analytics, human–machine interaction, advanced robotics, and 3-D printing) can offset half of the labor-cost differential between China and the United States. The gap narrows further when the cost of rigidity is factored in: end-to-end optimization is more important than the sum of individual transaction costs. And third, most businesses do not have a good idea of what is going on lower down in their supply chains, where subtiers and sub-subtiers may play small but critical roles. That is also where most disruptions originate, but two-thirds of companies say they can’t confirm the business-continuity arrangements with their non-tier-one suppliers. With the development of AI and data analytics, companies can learn more about, audit, and connect with their entire value chains.

The future of work arrives ahead of schedule

The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) estimates that more than 20 percent of the global workforce (most of them in high-skilled jobs in sectors such as finance, insurance, and IT) could work most of its time away from the office—and be just as effective…. There are two important challenges related to the transition to working away from the office. One is to decide the role of the office itself, which is the traditional center for creating culture and a sense of belonging. Returning to the office shouldn’t be a matter of simply opening the door. Instead, it needs to be part of a systematic reconsideration of what exactly the office brings to the organization….. The other challenge has to do with adapting the workforce to the requirements of automation, digitization, and other technologies. This isn’t just the case for sectors such as banking and telecom; instead it’s a challenge across the board, even in sectors not associated with remote work…In 2018, the World Economic Forum estimated that more than half of employees would need significant reskilling or upskilling by 2022.

Portfolio restructuring accelerates

In previous downturns, the strong came out stronger, and the weak got weaker, went under, or were bought. The defining difference was resilience—the ability not only to absorb shocks but to use them to build competitive advantage…. The implication is that there is a resiliency premium on recovery. Top performers won’t sit on their strengths; instead, as in previous downturns, they will seek out ways to build them.

Green, with a touch of brown, is the color of recovery

All over the world, the costs of pollution—and the benefits of environmental sustainability—are increasingly recognized.

The COVID-19 crisis has created an imperative for companies to reconfigure their operations—and an opportunity to transform them. To the extent that they do so, greater productivity will follow.

Unquote

We will now turn to our regular sections:

We now watch ASQ TV, wherein we refresh our viewpoints about–

  • Remote Auditing – Recent health guidelines have caused companies and independent auditors to view an online audit as a viable alternative to the on-site audit. Lance Coleman, ASQ Instructor, and Principal Consultant, Full Moon Consulting, details the benefits of online audits, how to get top management buy in and how to conduct an online audit.

We have taken up one article from Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems this month :

Fail Successfully – The hallmark is that highly successful people are not afraid to try something new, set aggressive goals, and are committed to achieve success. The possibility of failure exists but they are willing to take that chance. In fact, the only real failure is not trying at all…. Failure is perceived as a negative aspect of life, but successful people believe that failure is good. Failing means that you tried something new, and the results will teach you valuable lessons that make future success possible. Another aspect of failure that falls into the beliefs of successful people is that no one cares about or remembers your failures, so do not carry them with you. Learn and move on quickly … One other thing is certain: If you do not try anything, you are guaranteed to fail.

‘From the Editor (of Quality Magazine) – by Darryl Sealand, we have

Leaders and Followers – What do you call a leader with no followers? A guy taking a walk…. In a broader sense, it begs the question of the importance of following in the footsteps of another. It is why leaders also are often referred to as trailblazers, those creating paths for others… An important part of trailblazing was—and is—documentation…Today, trailblazing and documentation take place in the form of standard operating procedures and best practices…to help their customers and others effectively and successfully use technology or follow a process…or users and practitioners to expand, innovate, and forge new paths of success.

I look forward to your views / comments / inputs to further enrich the theme of Future of… as the basis for 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.

Quality Management Articles and Blogs – December 2020

Welcome to December 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
  • Process Management for Sustained Success in September 2020
  • Performance Measurement for Sustained Success in October 2020
  • Improvements for Sustained Success: A canvas of the improvement process to individual and collective mindsets in November, 2020.

We round up our discussion on the subject of Revisiting Basic Quality Concepts with Future of Quality –

People, naturally, see future of quality from the prism of their own context, and the context of the organization, that mostly ‘was’. or sometimes ‘is’, but hardly from ‘what it should be’.

Several magazines, management consulting companies and associations conduct the ‘future of….’ studies every year. We will anchor our focus on these studies during 2021.

For the present here are a few recent studies, for the current readings on the subject:

Quality Digest has run a series of articles by Tom Tormina on ‘The Future of Quality Management is Business Success’. All articles in this series:

The December 2020 issue of Quality Digest also has following articles –

The 12th edition of the World Quality Report 2020-21 (WQR), released by Capgemini, Sogeti, and Micro Focus, shows the steady evolution of quality assurance (QA) from a backroom discipline to an integral part of wider enterprise digital transformation. Contributing to business growth and business outcomes was the highest rated objective for testing and QA at 74% – up 6 percentage points from 2018. The full report can be accessed here.

Considering the phrase continuously improving as a synonyms of evolution, Jimena Calfa’s  2014 article, The Future of Quality: Evolutionary or Revolutionary?, become relevant again. She keeps thinking that Quality is going to keep evolving until the next revolution takes place, where is going to keep evolving from it.

Manikaran Singal in his article Here’s the formula of success you were searching for offers the formula

Future value= Present Value (1+r)n or Success= Efforts (1+results)time where,

The simple translation of the formula gives us the message that whatever the RoI, consistent efforts over a longer time frame can result the present ‘competence’, of an individual or an organization, to deliver sustained desired results.

The article, Quality 4.0: The Future of Quality? notes that ‘Quality 4.0 represents an opportunity to utilize those Industry 4.0 technologies to realign quality functions with broader organizational strategy.

On more mundane, immediate, terms, movement of people, data, and goods will be reshaped in the post-COVID world by the trends of emerging digital technologies and absorption thereof,[1]

To broadly sum up, one may state that to sustain the success in the future, where it is important to do what the successful people did, it is equally important not to do what the unsuccessful people did. But for that, you need to go deeper. In rather jargon terminology, overcome Survivorship Bias..

The detailed note on Future of Quality can be accessed by clicking on the hyperlink.

All facets of Revisiting Basic Quality Concepts that have been discussed at this blog carnival during 2020 can be read / downloaded as one file by clicking on the hyperlink.

We will now turn to our regular sections:

In the series the Organizational Culture, we have taken up Sustaining the Organizational Culture – It shall be well remembered that organizational culture is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The end is your business’s strategic agenda. Thus, sustaining the winning culture should be primarily pursued with the ultimate vision of sustaining the competitive edge, within the constantly varying context of the organization. It’s about raising sights beyond the strategic choices and daily initiatives to change how the organization works.

All month-wise published episodes of the series, published in 2020, The Organizational Culture, are collated in one file and can be read / downloaded by clicking on the hyperlink.

We now watch ASQ TV, wherein we refresh our viewpoints about:

  • The Golden Age of Quality – Ralph de la Vega, former Vice Chairman at AT&T, announces today is the Golden Age of Quality; a time when companies need to build quality into the product and service and detect problems before they occur.

We have taken up one article from Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems this month, which was /is and will remain to be relevant for all quality professionals –

  • The Moment of Truth – Whether we realize it or not, that everyone’s job, including the quality professional, comes down to one thing; helping our companies, at least those in business to remain profitable, As much as effectively robust processes, customer-need-satisfying competitive products and competent people are needed to run the business successfully, it is equally important that everyone in the organization consciously, and unconsciously, realizes that that their every, direct as well as indirect, interaction with customers (and for that matter with al the relevant interested parties) is that moment of truth that can make, or unmake, an opportunity for the business to remain profitable.

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.

 

All monthly episodes, from January to December 2020 of the Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs -2020 can be seen / downloaded as one file by clicking on the hyper link.

[1] We asked 3 CEOs what tech trends will dominate post-COVID – Andrea Hak

Carnival of Quality Management Blogs and Articles wishes A Qualitatively Rich and Very Happy 2021.