The Future of Quality is E.P.I.C

The world is changing. It pretty clear that the old industrial landscape you used to will soon look completely different. Intelligent systems will work together with humans for optimal performance in all business aspects. It not only the manufacturing floor that is affected but areas as finance, human resources, supply chain, and quality. Bottom line, the traditional way of driving quality is disrupted and will be different from the way you did it in the last decade.

What exactly the future bring for Quality managers and systems? How can you start today to leverage your organization, your business, your team and yourself for the future? In 2 words, Go E.P.I.C.

This article will stimulate your mind with ideas to accelerate Quality performance in your organization. Finding the right path to follow is often hard and challenging. This was my main motivation to establish the qllaborator.

E for Exponential Thinking

Powered by technology and information flow, the world is developing exponentially. However, the way you look at life, at the world, at possibilities remains the same for millions of years: local & linear. In short, a linear mindset is satisfied with a 10% improvement (sound familiar?). But an exponential mindset is out for 10X improvement. The technology around us is doubling performance every one to two years. CEO’s are accountable to catch up with this fast and mitigate disruptive risks to the company. Quality Manager is expected to transform quality tools and processes to align with the exponential growth of technology. In other words, how can you leverage technology to do quality work for you? What exponential tools you can use to 10X your quality system or any quality system in the world? Take the time to think about it and explore what areas of quality in your organization can exponentially improve. Plus, see 14 simple ways to get you started with Quality 4.0.

P for People Gravity

The future of work carries with it a dramatic change in organizations structure and working environment. Organizations will become smaller in size however not in revenue. A flat hierarchy will enable greater influence per employee. As it is now, you used to work in silos of people and data; you can’t imagine a situation of quality professionals doing finance reports or HR experts managing MRB meetings. But industry 4.0 bring automation that will break silos, as one person will execute multiple tasks across different areas. Imagine a business unit that operates by only one person: quality, finance, planning, purchasing, engineering, etc.

Employees will have a greater span of control, responsibility, and authority to make decisions. These decisions will be taken in a dynamic environment (on a larger scale than we know today). As a quality leader, you should adjust the system and provide tools to enable people in your organization to effectively manage changes, quickly.

–Simplify bureaucracy, by transforming current quality systems to be adaptable and flexible enough to face rapid changes. Take for example the change management process in your company. How long it currently takes to implement a product change? Few weeks or a few months? Moving forward to the era of ‘industry 4.0’, you will have a day, maybe less, to process and implement a change. Strangely as it might sounds, in the future of business, 24 hours is considered a long delivery time.

–Make a binary system out of quality. The key is to convert all quality requirements, even the “soft” ones, into a set of go-no-go actions that can be followed the same way by all people, no grey area attached. Consider it as a “recipe” for every task. A simple line of thought that should role every task you lead.

I for Information Fusion

Chances are in the last 24 hours you chased data or at least struggled to get it. After you finally gathered the data, further manipulation is needed, few hours of work. If you are nodding your head in frustration, know you are not alone. There is a long list of companies that can’t fully trust their data, although they invested a lot of efforts to collect it. The main reason is a manual data input to the systems, a process prone to errors. Moving ahead to Industry 4.0, automatic ways of data collection, like RFID, will neutralize manual interactions with the system and increase data reliability and trust. You’ll know anything you want anytime you want it, which create enormous opportunities. Information is the new revenue stream. In other words, learn how to utilize your information to improve quality and revenue. Airbnb is a good example. It is easy for them to multiply the number of rooms on their website. Hilton, on the other hand, needs more time and resources to build more hotels and operate them. It will cost them much more. It’s on you to adjust the quality system to be more of Airbnb and less of Hilton. A good start is mapping gaps in the quality of your data and system capabilities and finds creative ways to close these gaps and automate data generation.

C for Connectivity sphere

The future is in connecting people, processes and products. Internet of things and cognitive systems will play a crucial rule in this transformation. In real life, it means creating new ways to make everyone and everything connecting and engaging. A great example is the story of Rob McEwen, a chairman of Goldcorp. Ron owned a gold mine, without an idea of how much gold was there. Nine years of collecting geological data, and he still couldn’t conclude an accurate answer. Eventually, he approached “wisdom of the crowd” and launched a competition. Half a million dollar prize for anyone who could point the location of these 6 million ounces of gold. Over 125 people participated in this competition.  The feedback of 3 winners (Russia & New Zealand) yield over a billion dollar revenue. None of these answers, BTW, come up to his mind. McEwen’s geological data is your problem solving, SPC, continuous improvement ideas. How can you utilize the crowd to improve the quality of your products, services, and predictions?

In Conclusion,

There are a lot of opportunities for quality management professionals to add value and leverage their positions in their organizations. And now is the perfect timing to start. Just do it. In case you did, help others to grow. Share your best practices with the quality community.