The “New” Quality

Well this is the first article of my last year as Chair. I have thoroughly enjoyed the time and, as all members of an Executive Team, I hope I am leaving the Association slightly better than when I arrived. Summer, for me, is a time of rejuvenation and exploration. It is an opportunity to immerse myself in good books, podcasts, blogs, etc. Given that this is the first of my last 10 columns, I thought I would give myself permission to be a little pretentious. So this column is titled “The New Quality” and is my attempt to begin a dialogue on where we are (or should) be heading in order to stay relevant. Hey, I warned you it would be pretentious – but we all need to “crystal ball” every now and again. So from this point on let me get over the audacity and onto the discussion.

Before I get into trends for the future, I thought it might be helpful to give this discussion context and outline the forces shaping change as I see it:

·        Several key issues of global consequence are converging and are creating great pressure on business and this pressure will intensify.

o       Specifically these would be population growth and our ability to accommodate the basic needs this growth (water, food, healthcare, etc.)

o       Our reliance on fossil fuels (cheap energy) to solve problems and our decreasing supply of said miracle potion.

o       The impact of our problem solving methodology (throw oil or a petroleum derivative at it) on the basic life systems.

o       The growing realization and recognition that our economic and socials systems are bounded by the natural system (biosphere).

·        The result is the ability to externalize costs is being constrained (through natural, consumer and government backlash) and has much greater impact on business; whether that is recalls, spills or product health and safety. 

A myriad of business strategies exist to produce bottom line results, but very few are effective given the above constraints. For example we can increase productivity (outputs/inputs) by outsourcing to an emerging nation (i.e. reduce labour inputs), however, this is not necessarily consistent with a reduction of energy use or waste impact. The above context suggests that three key issues will emerge from their traditional perspective of cost centres into avenues of competitive advantage. The three areas I am referring to are Quality, Risk and Sustainability. All three of which the philosophies, tools and techniques of Quality Management are ideally suited to address.

Quality:

The connection here is obvious and largely addressed in the evolution of modern quality management. The expansion of QM application from conformance to design to process and by extension supply chain is the “meat and potatoes” of most of our daily work. The only trend here might be the escalating cost of failure. Public awareness and the diminishing tolerance for externalities will provide additional impetus to get this part of the equation right. This combined with the remaining two will elevate QM as a premier route to a better bottom line.

Risk:

An interconnected and complex world carries greater risk. The ability to identify, understand and respond to risk (and the opportunity it creates) will not only be a survival mechanism but a differentiator. QM tools such as FMEA or HACCP framework, properly applied, deal directly with the identification and proactive mitigation or elimination of risk. The Global Food Industry serves as a good example of the need for many businesses to transition from trying to measure and sort this risk to designing products and processes that address it directly. Presently food safety is an issue of measurement (conformance) as opposed to design of product and process, where it needs to be. As above this is a transition that quality has already faced and as a result we have much to offer.

Sustainability:

An economy that recognizes the natural constraint of the biosphere requires that sustainability strategies transition from waste/energy reduction (eco-efficiency) to a regenerative approach (often referred to as cradle to cradle or biomimicry). This is the area that as practitioners perhaps presents the biggest stretch however also the biggest need and the greatest reward. We already see this application to eco-efficiency such as using Lean Techniques to reduce waste generation. I believe many existing approaches and tools can be very useful however with a shift in perspective or perhaps emphasis. For example the approach of reducing suppliers (and increasing the depth of the relationship) and standardizing components across multiple product lines might be typical moves to reduce risk, increase product quality and increase control and efficiency of the supply chain. Biomimicry might suggest the reduction of materials to a very small number of non-toxic, easily recyclable materials so that used product can be mined for its base constituents and regenerated into the next generation of product. This would produce similar looking results (i.e. fewer suppliers and standardized materials) albeit with different motivators. In this area we can learn a lot from the relatively new field of Industrial Ecology. They share many of our basic viewpoints, most notably systems thinking. I can recommend a great read – Earth Inc. by Gregory Unruh, Thunderbird School of Business (Harvard Business Press).