Tag: Quality management system

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:

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:

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 – August, 2018

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

ISO 9004 and ISO 19011, the two important guidelines standards in the ISO family of standards have been recently revised. Therefore, we will take a quick recap of Changes in ISO 9004: 2018 as well as in ISO 19011:2018 in our August, 2018 issue.

ISO 9004: 2018 cancels and replaces the third edition (ISO 9004:2009), which has been technically revised. The main changes compared to the previous edition are as follows:

  • alignment with the concepts and terminology of ISO 9000:2015 and ISO 9001:2015;
  • focus on the concept of “quality of an organization”;
  • focus of the concept of “identity of an organization”

[Note: We will cover the concepts – “quality of an organization” and “identity of an organization” in our subsequent issues.]

Secrets of business success in new ISO standard – The 2018 Corporate Longevity Forecast lists new technologies, economic shocks, disruptive competitors and failure to adequately anticipate and prepare for future challenges as some of the key reasons cited for the demise of the organizations sooner than later..IS0 9004:2018 intends organizations not only to survive, but achieve “sustained success”, by addressing topics such as the alignment and deployment of strategy, policy and objectives within the broader context of the organization’s vision, mission, values and culture.

ISO 9004:2018 – Sustaining Success – ISO 9004:2018 has taken a major step in defining itself as a standalone document that is related to—but separate from—ISO 9001:2015. It’s all about business, with a primary focus on organizations’ sustained success…The words “sustained success” have been chosen carefully and may be confusing to some people because ISO and quality management system-related standards consistently promote improvement in their titles. ISO 9004:2018 broke with that tradition to convey the message that no matter what an organization attempts, it must first adopt sustainability as a bedrock principle.

ISO 19011:2018 was updated to ensure it continues providing effective guidance to address changes in the marketplace, evolving technologies and the many new management system standards recently published or revised.

The main differences compared to the 2011 edition are as follows:

  • addition of the risk-based approach to the principles of auditing;
  • expansion of the guidance on managing an audit programme, including audit programme risk;
  • expansion of the guidance on conducting an audit, particularly the section on audit planning;
  • expansion of the generic competence requirements for auditors;
  • adjustment of terminology to reflect the process and not the object (“thing”);
  • removal of the annex containing competence requirements for auditing specific management system disciplines (due to the large number of individual management system standards, it would not be practical to include competence requirements for all disciplines);
  • expansion of Annex A to provide guidance on auditing (new) concepts such as organization context, leadership and commitment, virtual audits, compliance and supply chain.

With these improvements, ISO 19011:2018 still details the principles of auditing, managing an audit program, and conducting management system audits. It also details guidance on evaluating the individuals managing the audit program, auditors, and audit teams.

ISO 19011:2018 provides valuable information on how to improve an audit program systematically, just as other departments in an organization are expected to improve… Organizations, in pushing for auditing improvements, should consider the needs of customers and other interested parties…An area of increasing importance in auditing management systems and business in general is the concept of risk. As of the 2011 edition, risk has been integrated throughout the audit program management section of the ISO 19011:2018 standard.

[Note: We would take up ‘concept of risk’, as ingrained into the auditing process, in our next issue.]

We will now turn to our regular sections:

For the present episode we have picked up William Cohen, Ph.D’s article How to Avoid Inevitable Failure Through Innovation @ Lessons From Drucker column of Management Matters Network….’If any organization continued to do what in the past had made it successful, it was certain that it would eventually go under’ was one sure way that Drucker knew that an organization was going to fail…Avoiding failure requires innovation, and innovation is one of two primary tasks of any business, the other being marketing…He also understood that resources in time, talent, capital, and facilities are needed every time an innovation is initiated and exploited. This led Drucker to a very important concept which has come to be called “abandonment.”… Drucker saw that logically this meant that an organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does at the same time that it must devote itself to creating the new. So that abandonment must simultaneously be executed along with continuous improvement, exploitation of past successes and innovation.

We now watch one of the latest ASQ TV  episodes:

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

  • Organizational Excellence in Quality Management – The basic element is people who care. – People who care understand the negative impact of doing less than their best…Caring isn’t a new concept. The late Dr. W. Edwards Deming called it “pride in workmanship”…. If their employees really do care, it is so tangible it can be felt and detected in many ways. There’s a foundation of caring permeating throughout the organization. However, if people don’t care, it really doesn’t matter what kind of products or system they have or how many plaques are hanging on the walls, they will never achieve the level of performance needed for all to succeed.

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 – 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-

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

training-internal-audit

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:mr-pareto-head

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, lookJim's Gems 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 – July, 2016

Welcome to July, 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-

For the present episode we will see how ‘Leadership’ in the Other ISO Management Standards’ is addressed.

Leadership – Leadership may therefore be the most important lever in an (ethical) system designed to support (ethical) conduct.

In The Expanding Role of Leadership in Management System Standards Chad Kymal states that new versions of ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and ISO 45001 set clear expectations. He also has drawn a broader canvas of the expanding role of the leadership in MSS.

In a very lucid white paper – The Importance of leadership in Management System Standards – BSI concludes that “many of the leadership responsibilities are contained in the standard text of Annex SL. So the principles and requirements for the other management system standards will be very similar, but with a focus onto the respective discipline, for instance environmental management or health and safety management.”

In Top Management Commitment: What Are The Standards , Syed Mahammud Wasif has postulated 10 initiatives that set the tone for the top management commitment.

Leadership for the Many, Not the Few – Beth Zimmerman states that all members of the Evans team are supported in exercising and strengthening their leadership skills in ways that align with their personal passions and Evans’ corporate goals. We also make additional investments to ensure that those with people-management responsibilities have strong skills in, and a consistent approach to, supporting those they manage in succeeding in their respective roles. Evans applies a mix of practices to bolster leadership – Coaching, Tools for Success, Mixed-level Teams, Internal and External Opportunities for Growth, Training for People Managers,

We also have a few videos on the subject:

  • ISO revisions – All about leadership in the new standards
  • Management and Leadership overview
  • Teaching leaders “What to Stop”

Obviously, before we can expect many more articles on the actual practices, we will have to wait for some more time as more and more organizations take up the implementations of the newer versions of these management system standards.

For the August, 2016 episode, we will take Change Management 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 has a guest article by Scott Rutherford – What Do We Expect from Senior Leaders? – that also looks at our current subject of leadership. Scott Rutherford recalls a 1986 Quality Progress review  by Dr. Joseph Juran.  The quote is:

“It is most important that top management be quality-minded. In the absence of sincere manifestation of interest from the top, little will happen from below.”

We now watch the latest ASQ TV  episodes:

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

  • The Magic Ingredient for Success – is attitude! Successful people have a way of looking at things, a way of seeing obstacles as opportunities, and a way of “hanging in there” to make the most of every possibility. This is an attitude of positive affirmation that almost always guarantees success….The good news about attitude is that it can be altered, and we, not anyone else, are in charge of our own attitudes. What’s your Jim's Gemsattitude? If it’s not going to bring you success, then change it!
  • Where Should Organizations Focus their Greatest Efforts?… On Process or People? – Peter Drucker, the late author and management consultant, wrote that “neither technology nor people determine the other, but each shapes the other.” …..In planning how to evaluate claim data quality, building a framework of systems-thinking proved extremely helpful. Namely, the process principles of statistical thinking formed the conceptual foundation of a quality improvement plan which included: (1) All work occurs in a system of interconnected processes; (2) Variation exists in all processes; and (3) Understanding and reducing variation are keys to success….a translation from process to a greater attention on people suggests the following principles: (1) All work is done by individuals; (2) An individual’s work is variable; (3) Key to quality improvement is reducing variation by getting the right person into the right job….a predominant focus on people can lead either to management paralysis or to process tampering, when people are primarily held accountable…..Success stems from having the right processes and the right people in place. The development of this leadership style has been shaped by envisioning processes first and then providing people the opportunity to engage those processes.

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 – November 2013

Welcome to November 2013 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

We have few good leads for Social Responsibilities vis-à-vis Quality.

Raj Sapru, Former Director, Advisory Services in  BSR Insight presents Sustainability: What’s Quality Got to Do With It? :  As the relative upstart to quality (which is three times older), CSR may follow a similar path, moving from executive mandate to corporate function to a set of integrated values. Some even argue that the success of CSR integration will be measured by a diminishing need for a corporate-level CSR or sustainability function—and there are many lessons from the path that quality has taken.

BSR’s recent report in partnership with the American Society of Quality, “CSR and Quality: A Powerful and Untapped Connection,” explores in more depth the connection between CSR
Building Socially Responsible Organizations:  ASQ’s social responsibility (SR) initiative, TheSRO, has a new website. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I strongly encourage you to do so. Here’s the link: www.thesro.org. It’s mission is to “increase the use and impact of quality to meet the diverse needs of the world.”
Increasingly, accountability and social responsibility are the expectation of consumers around the globe. To be socially responsible, people and organizations must behave ethically and with sensitivity toward social, cultural, economic, and environmental issues…….We believe that quality offers the tools to meet these emerging needs. TheSRO is a collaborative movement to integrate socially responsible practices into systematic approaches that meet the diverse needs of the world. To learn more about the connection between quality and SR, click here

As an organization, Business for Social Responsibility’s mission is to work with business to create a just and sustainable world. We envision a world in which everyone can lead a prosperous and dignified life within the boundaries of the Earth’s natural resources.
BSR ‘s Theory of Change believes that a just and sustainable world will result when the unique skills and resources of all sectors—business, civil society, and government—are aligned toward that goal. The role of business is to create and deliver products and services in a way that treats people fairly, meets individual’s needs and aspirations within the boundaries of our planet, and encourages market and policy frameworks that enable a sustainable future.

Lowell Centre for Sustainable Production  – By taking up the challenge of pursuing the long-term goal of Lowell Center projects and affiliates to redefine environmentalism and occupational health and safety while also demonstrating how these concepts are compatible with new systems of production and consumption that are healthy for workers, environmentally sound, economically viable, and socially accountable.

At this point, we take a sudden detour to more technical aspects of Quality.

October 2013 issue of IRCA’s magazine INform  brings Japan’s inside scoop on the new ISO 9001 standard and tests your standards knowledge in our exclusive quiz

In its technical section, Richard Green talks about the generic approach to transition training for future Management Systems Standards.

Whilst on the subject of enriching Internal Audit as a tool for Quality Improvement, in a regular column in  Quality Digest , GOTTFRIED GIRITZER    suggests Using Internal Audits as an Efficiency Improvement Tool to check for the efficiency of the System . Formal “Internal Auditor” trains co-auditors. For them it’s not necessary to have education and training as an internal auditor. It is only their duty to study all the relevant regulations of the management system that are valid for the department in question prior the internal audit.

51 Objects in ISO 9001 has identified 51 objects in ISO 9001,which should exist or be implemented in order to control customer satisfaction. 34 (66%) of these objects are processes/procedures. In a few cases quality dimensions of these objects are explicitly mentioned: commitment (5.1), customer focus (5.2) competence, awareness (6.2.2), traceability (7.5.3) and continuity (8.5.1). Some key words are: control (6), design and development (6), quality (3) and review (3).

The Most Common Mistakes with ISO 9001 to Avoid has re-visited the fundamental basis for pursuing the design and implementation of ISO 900 standards, so as to align the overall business strategy with the body of QMS within the organization.

APPLY THE PDCA CYCLE FOR CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT ON EPCI PROJECT has graphically explained application of continual improvement in project management set up.

Jørgen Winther@ The No Crisis Blog has put the PDCA in its right perspective – “a cultural habit – not a project , not something that can be done by force, but a way of working on every day basis” in How Long is “Continuous”? – On PDCA.

We once again take a turn to take on a macro view of Quality.

Greg Goodwin has posted 3 Questions to Answer When Shaping Your Quality Management Culture, because achieving a model of operational excellence  and optimizing the company’s key resources of people, processes, and technology requires the efforts of the entire organization.

The three questions are:
1.      Are you cultivating quality management leaders in your organization?
In order to best manage quality and foster an environment of innovation and continuous improvement, it’s important to provide a corporate framework while leaving room for some decisions that may be best left to local leaders.
     2.  What is the proper ratio of corporate versus local quality management?
The most effective approach is usually a “hybrid” between the two that focuses on standardizing only the processes that are essential to meeting the organization’s overall quality goals, allowing for continuous improvement and local control where they are deemed more effective.
    3. What is the role of technology in building a quality culture?
On top of the superior data collection and analysis capabilities enabled, having integrated solutions is an important way of improving communication and collaboration around quality.

Shaun Spearmon , an engagement leader at Kotter International loves  Lewis Carroll’s quote, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” In the article, Your Company Vision: If It’s Complicated, It Shouldn’t Be,  he amplifies that visions are intended to clarify the pathway forward. When effective, the vision statement has an illuminating quality that allows organizations to move fast and with great precision. Simply stated:  It’s NOT complicated.

Kurt J. Harden@ Cultural Offering – They don’t care about you  touches upon one of toughest lessons to teach new employees, in the workforce, is a simple guiding service principle:  They don’t care about you.

It isn’t a sad commentary on society; it is commerce.  It is basic psychology and can be incredibly liberating.  Armed with this understanding and acting on it, your problems may actually lessen, your load may even lighten as you serve others with greater focus. ……Learn the lesson and you are on your way to success.

Caroline Ceniza-Levine , on Forbes  – has quoted Albert Einstein – Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. – in  What Is The Better Metric: Feelings Or Numbers?.  And then builds up: Einstein has it exactly right. There is no one suitable metric for everything. You have to run the numbers and understand your data. But not everything can be boiled down to numbers, nor should it.
Ideas for World Quality Month 2013 : November is the Fourth Annual World Quality Month, a celebration of quality, its impact on the world, and quality practitioners whose knowledge, experience, and passion make improved quality available for anyone who asks. You can learn more about the event on www.worldqualitymonth.org.

Eyesore 9001 & Other Humor Documents – Face it, Quality is a tough profession, and sometimes you need a break from the stress. This is where Oxebridge’s free humour documents come in.
EYESORE 9001 was first published in 2004, and has since been downloaded over 250,000 times. It’s a hilarious and biting look at not only the ISO 9001 standard, but the machine behind the creation of such standards. Updated for ISO 9001:2008, you can still download it for free below.

DUMBAS9100 takes on the aviation, space and defence industries, with this parody of the aerospace standard AS9100. For mature readers only (some adult language), you can download it here.

We begin our usual round of ASQ Videos with 2013 World Quality Month, supplemented with Videos with keyword “World Quality Month”

ASQ TV Episode 10: Teamwork: Learn what makes a team work successfully to accomplish goals and deliver results.

Our ASQ’s Influential Voices this month is Daniel John Zrymiak.

Daniel Jon Zrymiak“Daniel John Zrymiak is from Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. He has worked in quality for two decades, mostly recently at Accenture as a Mobilization Lead. Daniel is active in ASQ as a Quality Press author and reviewer, member leader, and Technical Committee chair (Finance and Governance – Quality Management Division). He blogs at AQualitEvolution.

“With respect to Quality, I have as many questions as answers, and through the exchange I hope to create a community of like-minded people to help advance our profession in order to achieve and sustain relevance and positive breakthroughs as we pursue and realize our ideals.””

“A QualitEvolution is intended to capture positions and experiences as a participant in the evolution of the Quality profession into the 21st century. From its origins as the brainchild of Corporate Industrial Statisticians, our profession has transformed and evolved to incorporate and adapt to the demands and expectations of our modern existence.

The scope of the subject matter within A QualitEvolution extends to the furthest ranges of quality, business transformation, management science, and all that jazz ..”

And we finally round up our present edition with- John Hunter’s Management Improvement Carnival # 201.

There cannot be iota of doubt that what we cover in each episode here may not be totally representative of what was written on Quality. It is also not all that I came across to read. It is only what I found to be interesting in so far as tour main topic – QUALITY – is concerned. Hence, it also can be taken as an accepted fact that your constructive inputs would go a l..o..n..g way to enrich the content on this carnival………

Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs – August 2013

Welcome to August 2013 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

It indeed makes a good sense, to keep re-visiting some of the fundamental topics periodically and re-fresh, re-test and re-validate the foundation of our thinking. We begin our journey for the current edition with one of the founding block of Quality – ISO 9001, and the fundamental subject of need and importance of work instruction.

Difference Between Process, Procedures and Work Instructions is that of breadth and depth. A process defines the big picture and highlights the main elements of your business–breadth.  A procedure captures those elements and adds more information for functional responsibilities, objectives, and methods–depth.  Your work instructions fill in more detail for your procedures with detailed specifics–more depth. And since, A work instruction is simply what the name implies, instructions to do work, ISO 9001 clause 7.5.1 work instructions meticulously examines why the clause 7.5.1 of ISO 9001 does not refer to ‘work instruction’.

We have a similar, fundamental, ever-interesting, and extensive discussed and debated topic of Training.

Global State of Quality: Professional Training, on the basis of  ASQ’s Global State of Quality research has some interesting facts on this matter:
# “Organizations that govern quality with a centralized group are roughly 30 percent more likely to provide quality training to staff than organizations where a senior executive governs the quality process”.

And

# The research also shows that “the majority of organizations have a fairly narrow training scope by providing quality-related training to staff directly involved in the quality process. Only a handful of organizations provide quality training to all staff”

Is it because the training is perceived more as and end that meets ISO 9001 Training Requirements, and is not being very creatively as tool that can, at the minimum,  go long way in retaining the interest of an employee in the work, and at a higher level can be a great tool for the employee engagement.?

A happy (retained) employee and their voluntary engagement would work volumes in so far as all round aspects Quality – of goods & services, service to customers, care of other stakeholder’s interests and the work environment  are concerned.

The two quotes mentioned in Tim McMahon’s  The Worst Waste of All: Lack of Employee Involvement  aptly sum the message of the article – Thinking you can’t is the worst form of waste because it thwarts your tackling the other, more-familiar forms of waste – : Henry Ford probably said it best when he noted, “You can think you can achieve something or you can think you can’t and you will be right.”. AND “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checked by failure…than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt.

In this regards, Nicole Radziwill in her blog Quality and Innovation , aiming to explore “quality and productivity & innovation in socio-technical systems, presents “unique quality orientation” at Max’s in Making Quality Standards a Collaborative Game the service staff and the customer!

That also reminded me to search for some concise material on “Mumbai’s Dabbawala”’s  as an example of the all-round qualitative benefits of the engagement of the people in their work.  Among several excellent presentations available on Slide Share, we take  a look at one representative presentation – The Wonder of Mumbai Dabbawalas.- by Targetseo’s Paavan Solanki.

If the Quality professional think why have been talking of such a fundamental people issue on A Carnival of Quality Management articles, a visit to Tanmay Vora’s SHRM Top 20 Indian HR Influencers Active on Social Media 2013, wherein he talks about the challenge for those who wish to make a difference is to generate influence and reaffirms his belief: Excellence is a product of leading people well and every manager, in that sense, is an HR Manager. Building a culture of excellence is not just a departmental job of HR, it is everybody’s job. And to further buttress the point, we have his recognition as #3 in “Top 20 Indian HR Influencers Active on Social Media 2013”’

Indeed, an occasion to celebrate for all Quality professionals, and to heartily felicitate Mr. Tanmay Vora for practicing his deep-rooted fundamental beliefs as a true Quality Professional  and commitments to the basic values of Quality profession.

Dan Rockwell, in How to Get What You Want presents us one more fundamental aspect that also is  well applicable to the practices of Quality Thinking, when he states that to get(ing) what you want, do give what you want.

We will continue drawing inspirations for our ‘fellow’ disciplines.

Seth Godin – Marketing driven or Market driven?  – succinctly underlines the issue that “there are organizations driven by Sales, by Shareholder Relations and by Operations and Tech too. Even a few, those seem to be run by the Employee-happiness Department. Not many, though. Even in these organizations, the option remains: you can be market driven instead. The first step is to choose your market…”.

No thorough-bred Quality Professional would deny the importance of sustained competitive advantage that can accrue from the customer-orientation in its true form!

Rajesh Setty’s ‘The most MEANINGFUL competitive advantage’ emphatically underscores “the ability to scale   your [and, the quality professional’s as well] ability to care, because so many people out there pretend to care.

That (ability to care) is also emphasized by Vineet Nayar [HCL Technologies] in his article Three Differences Between Managers and Leaders, wherein he has provided three simple tests to find out when [the {quality} professional] has “crossed over from being a manager to a leader:

  •   Counting Value vs. Creating Value
  •   Circles of Power vs. Circles of Influence
  •   Managing Work vs. Leading People

Mark Netzel, Quality Director at J.B. Stamping Inc., Cleveland/Akro recommends us link to Report of the PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident , which “is a Good article on root cause investigation of the space shuttle explosion years ago.”  The detailed report of the exhaustive hearings is followed by “Actions to Implement the Recommendations of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle  Challenger Accident” and “IMPLEMENTATION OF THE RECOMMENDATIONS  of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident”.
Now we turn on to our ‘regular’ sections.

In ASQ TV Episode 6: Certifications,  we catch up with ASQ past chair Jim Rooney as he discusses the value of achieving professional certifications, how they’re different from a certificate and how to choose the right certification for you. Hear from ASQ certification-holders about how certifications have helped them in their careers, and learn some study strategies to help you prepare for an exam.

This month we visit ASQ CEO Paul Borawski @ ASQ’s Influential Voices who generates discussion on quality topics and trends on his blog, A View from the Q. Paul looks to the global quality community to add to the conversation.by sharing insight and comments about how quality is transforming the world.

As CEO of ASQ, Paul Borawski’s influence and progressive managerial concepts are what drive the world’s leading community of people passionate about quality.

Paul BorawskiAs part of his role, Paul guides and oversees ASQ’s global development, including growth strategies for its offices in Mexico, China and India. ASQ’s family of resources also includes RABQSA International, and the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation board.

The European Organization for Quality awarded him the Georges Borel medal in 2006 for his contributions to the European Community. He was also named “one of the most influential people in the field of quality” by Quality Digest magazine in 2005.

Paul’s passion for quality goes beyond the plaques that hang on his office walls.  He derives his enthusiasm and energy from people who seek the next new idea, a unique new approach, and the drive to incorporate quality into every aspect of life. He revels in environments where knowledge is grown and people collaborate to create the future they want.

Let us peep in at the fare that his blog presents:

Roundup: How and Why Quality Professionals Use Social Media
We don’t always think of quality professionals using social media for professional networking. Yet according to ASQ’s Influential Voices bloggers, many do just that—and most use social platforms beyond blogging.

And we finally round up our present edition with –
Management Improvement Carnival #198

We did look at this month’s Carnival from a somewhat different angle.

I eagerly look forward to your views on the alternative approaches that we have shared all these months….so as to enable me to keep searching for more and more material that we would like to see at these Carnivals…..