How will the future of quality unfold? In his last blog post of “A view from the Q”, Bill Troy asked an interesting question on the future of Quality. He believes that “there are two very distinct views about the future of quality we need to at least acknowledge, if not actually reconcile:
- Evolutionary change: The quality movement has been immensely important and successful in many fields and will continue to grow and evolve, but will do so in recognizable and well-defined ways. We will move down traditional paths but reach new destinations and make new inroads into fields that are underserved today. We will keep doing what we do well and find ways to do it even better.
- Revolutionary change: Some of the ways we brought value to our businesses, industries, and communities will have to fundamentally change. We will have to bring value to the C-suite as much as to the production line. We must have tools that will facilitate a meaningful contribution at ever more senior levels to make the impact our customers and colleagues want. Knowledge, which we value so highly and have worked so hard to gather, organize, and refine, must be shared much more freely in the age of new media. Even what we describe as quality may be subsumed by different umbrella terms such as “organizational excellence or “risk management.”
During the life of any organization, business, process, product or even in our personal life, we are continuously improving, EVOLVING to make things better – do you think in the PDCA cycle as myself for the improvements? (First S-curve). Then, you reach a maturity point and because of many factors such as the economy, technology, innovation and environment, you start thinking or needing a radical change; in other words you need a REVOLUTION to keep yourself or your organization in the market, and of course keep evolving from it (Next S-curve).
Here is a example of the Internet Revolution and Evolution (S-curve extracted from the book “Exploring the Limits of the Technology S-Curve”)
Juran , in his “Quality Handbook” (5th edition) talked about Quality as a “continuing revolution” from the primitive societies, artisan and guilds to the industrial revolution and the explosive growth in science and technology in the twentieth century. He considers that quality is going to keep in a revolution way since the “emergence of some massive new forces that required responsive action like: an explosive growth in science and technology, threats to human safety and health and to the environment, the rise of the consumerism movement, and intensified international competition in quality”
So, considering the phrase continuously improving as a synonyms of evolution, I keep thinking that Quality is going to keep evolving until the next revolution takes place, where is going to keep evolving from it.
The quote I’ve selected for this month is: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change” ~ Charles Darwing
Share your thoughts with me, how do you think the future of quality will unfold?
– Image courtesy of luigi diamanti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
