Influential Voices: STEM and the Future
06 Feb 2012 6 Comments
in Uncategorized Tags: education, future, potential, quality, STEM
As I read Paul’s blog post this month, I found myself thinking about my current frustration with my son’s education. In the past, I’ve said good things about the education that my children are receiving, but this year, my son hit the front of the pack in his class with his math skills, he has a teacher who is not able to be as flexible as I’d like to be able to accommodate multiple levels in the classroom. From the sound of things, my son is now working independently a unit or more ahead of his class, but it is not clear if he is being taught the material or he is learning it on his own. He was supposed to get a high school student who was advanced to work with him, but I’m not sure that this has happened, and my son hasn’t told me.
So why am I telling you about my son when we are talking about STEM and the future? Because my son on his own is not the future, but my son, and each of his peers, and the rest of his school, and all the other children that age ARE the future of STEM. If we lose them one by one because they are not getting what they need because they are not at the middle of the pack, STEM is not going to have a future. I love that when I take my son to my daughter’s gymnastics meets, he wants to add up the scores and come up with his own metrics. I love that my son asked for science kits for his birthday and is teaching my daughter and doing projects with her from the kits. I can manage the expectations of hard work or a costly education if the school doesn’t turn my kids off to STEM before they have the opportunity to explore it as a career.
Influential Voices: How does your Quality Grow?
29 Jan 2012 1 Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: potential, quality, sustainability
In a post on Measuring the Value of Quality, Paul Borowski laments that we don’t have a line outside the door of folks searching for answers on how to bring quality to their organization. Statistics like, “[t]wenty cents of every dollar of revenue in manufacturing is lost to poor quality” and “[t]hirty cents of every revenue dollar in service is lost to poor quality” and perhaps the scariest one, “[s]eventy cents in healthcare” – are you scared yet? If you’ve every worked in manufacturing, beyond the financial costs of poor quality, this also results in wasted time, lost customer satisfaction, and lost resources. Philip Crosby famously said “Quality is free. It’s not a gift, but it’s free. The ‘unquality’ things are what cost money.” Whether or not you believe in Crosby’s Zero Defects philosophy, this quote rings true.
As natural resources become increasingly scarce, a renewed focus on quality is needed. What if we returned to designing reliable products that were meant to survive a generation, rather than the current system of planned obsolescence? What if our leadership provided more incentive to produce cost avoidance due to doing right the first time instead of cost reductions and improvement efforts due to kaizan activities? What if we stopped saying it’s not my job and started saying how can we solve this problem together? In most organizations, business as usual will simply not be sustainable in the future. How can we plant the seeds together to make quality grow? What is growing in your quality garden?
Influential Voices: December post, a little late
17 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
As I write this, December has in fact come and gone. Winter has finally hit Wisconsin, and the wind is blowing hard today. I have been reflecting on December, and not posting, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it has to do with the reminder that I still have popping up in Outlook; a reminder to call Danny Whelan. I am working on an initiative to improve training delivery to member leaders with a team from the Section Affairs Council (SAC) and the Division Affairs Council (DAC). I had e-mailed Dan to talk about ethics training materials, and I put a note in my calendar to call him at the “beginning of next week.” Only I got to busy and didn’t make the call. And now I can’t.
I still remember the folks that I met at the first board meeting I attended in 2006 at WCQI, just before my term started that July 1st. Dan was one of those rolling off the board at the time. I remember that he made me feel welcome, and he made me laugh. I had the privilege to spend more time with Dan while hanging out with the Biomedical division at WCQI and other events. I laughed when I found an old blog post from WCQI in 2007, talking about a visit to Sleuth’s in Orlando, and the fun, friendships and learning I had experienced that day. I appreciate the times that Dan answered my questions, both about ASQ, and about quality in the medical device industry.
So I think that it is time to dismiss that reminder. We’ll get to read more about Danny in the February Quality Progress. Thanks for listening… and I’ll be back with a January post later this month.
Influential Voices: 40 Under 40
29 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
I was excited to see the Quality Progress article in November on The New Voices of Quality, especially since I know so many of the folks on the list from around the globe! Paul notes in his blog post that our youngest members are excited about the future of quality. I remember when I first joined the board of directors of ASQ in 2006. While I was not the youngest on the board at the time, I was under 40, and people were excited to see someone that young so involved with quality and the society. We need to continue to find torch bearers in the next generation to raise their voice for quality. I am inspired by these stories of the next generation of quality and their efforts to make a difference. We need to capture this positive energy, and use it to fuel our efforts globally. How do you help the next generation raise the voice of quality?
Influential Voices: World Quality Month
28 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
Did you know that November is World Quality Month? Paul Borowski talks about it on his blog and vlog. He poses the following questions:
“How is it that you came to be passionate about quality?” and “How will you help in your country to observe and celebrate the importance of quality?”
I became passionate about quality when I saw the impact the quality, and poor quality could have within an organization. My start in quality started in customer service (AKA retail). I worked for Nedrebo’s Formalwear in Madison, WI – I rotated between two of their facilities to get a 40 hour week. We actually had a full day of offsite training on customer service while I worked there. One of the things I learned was that the more I know not just about our products, but about products related to ours, the better service I could offer our customers. Prom boy or huge wedding party, we learned to treat each and every customer as if they were the most important customer in the store. This led to referrals and repeat business, when the best men and groomsmen were ready to marry. When I go into a retail store, I always go back to the training we received and the level of service that we delivered to our customers – typically it is just not there.
How will I celebrate World Quality Month? I do a lot of sharing of information within my company, and I am planning to use that platform to share information about quality tools and applications. We focus on quality year round, but this is another opportunity to spread the word about quality, to raise the voice of quality in an organization already committed to this journey.
I’d like to ask you the same questions: “How is it that you came to be passionate about quality?” and “How will you help in your country to observe and celebrate the importance of quality?”
Influential Voices: What is the Future of Quality?
22 Aug 2011 1 Comment
This month, Paul Borowski blogs about the past and the future of quality. He poses two questions, the first of which is, “does the quality community bear some responsibility for making sure its philosophic foundations are not lost to history?”
George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The history and body of knowledge of quality contains information not just on what we currently believe to work, but what worked at one time, and stopped working as systems evolved. And there are some principles that have continued to remain the same throughout the history of quality. Knowledge of Juran and his methods should extend well beyond quality professionals. I took the certification exam for the Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence within the past year, and I found that a good deal of the material overlapped with and Operations Management class that I was taking for my MBA. Should Ops Mgmt folks be teaching Juran, Crosby and Deming? Absolutely? Should the quality community bring this to the table wherever we go? Absolutely.
Paul’s second question asks, “What do professionals under the age of 35 see as the future of quality?” Since I’m over the age of 35, I pose this question to my readers as well. I see sustainability integrated with management systems as the future of quality. A presentation given by Bryan Sheehan of SymbioSus in partnership with Green Mountain College shows the clear linkages between quality and sustainability. Is it possible to have quality without sustainability? I don’t think so. Because if you have created something that is not sustainable, you will quite literally be dead in the water.
Influential Voices: Talking Quality at Ford
17 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: customer service, experience, marketing, quality
I’ll preface this post with a little explanation on the header: I’m planning to start blogging more often, so I’m going to include information in the subject line that makes my posts easier to identify.
Last month at WCQI, Paul Borowski interviewed Bernie Fowler, the VP of Quality and New Model Launch at Ford and wrote about it on his blog. Unfortunately I’m not able to watch the video, but something that struck me in Paul’s comments was the statement, “quality must focus on more than product—it must focus on the entire customer experience.” Having recently completed a marketing class, I can’t help but notice the similarity between Bernie’s comment on what quality is today and the definition of marketing.
I’ve seen this highlighted in determining where to send my kids for gymnastics lessons. The spotty quality of coaching is one thing (the product), but when I combine that with a director who plays favorites with kids, coaches and parents (the experience), moving the kids to a club further away from home was actually an easy choice.
In my own work, my company sells not just a product, but also services, and our teams develop close working relationships with their customers. In a previous role, I had a customer frustrated with working with someone at a supplier, and worked with the supplier to fix the issue, which in turn improved our customer’s experience. We all have the ability to impact our customers, whether they are internal or external by focusing on the experience. How do you impact the experience of your customers?
Quality in Education
26 Apr 2011 1 Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: ASQ, Baldrige, education, quality
I have to admit that my first thought when I read Paul’s April blog post, my first thoughts were competitive ones. I went to HS in Wisconsin for most of two years. My freshman year I was at Homestead High school in Mequon. My sophomore year I was at Nicolet High school in Fox Point. Both of these schools are in the general vicinity of the Pewaukee school district. In April of my sophomore year, we moved to Florida. I thought both Homestead and Nicolet were excellent schools. Really, though, education in all schools should be a race to the top.
One of the things that has impressed me the most with my own children’s education (on the other side of Wisconsin) is that in spite of the fact that they are in what one would consider to be a traditional classroom setting, I see them being treated as individuals rather than part of the group so that they can excel. My son (age 9, grade 3) is asked to help mentor other students when he finishes his own work – this helps reinforce his own learning of the material as well as prevents boredom. My daughter (age 7, grade 1) is in an advanced reading group with one other student, and should be on chapter books before the end of the school year. Both of my kids have learned through their education and experience to set goals in ways I can’t imagine having done at their age. I still can’t get over Hannah breaking down her larger gymnastics goals into by event goals, and then setting new goals as she achieved the ones she set earlier. This is the same approach she has taken in her reading goals – one level at a time, currently on L, they typically start chapter books after M. This flow down of goals, helping individuals see how their own actions are tied to a higher goal is consistent with the Baldrige criteria.
Whether or not schools embrace Baldrige (ours hasn’t and still outperforms the state averages in spite of being a rural school district), the important thing is the commitment to quality. Is No Child Left Behind and AYP the answer? I don’t have an answer for that. Perhaps what we should aspire to teach our teachers to teach and our administrators to administer in a way that quality is integrated, not separate from what they do. What if the Baldrige criteria were taught as the standard way to run a school district and its schools? What if quality in education wasn’t something extra, a program – it was just what we did? What if?
Goals for the New Year
31 Dec 2010 2 Comments
In Paul Borowski’s latest blog post, he poses the question, “What are your goals in quality for the coming year?”
I have to look at this from a number of different standpoints. At work, I am involved in our corporate social responsibility efforts, and creating a unified management system that meets the intent of the Electronics Industry Code of Conduct. This will be an exciting challenge in itself. I am excited about the opportunities that this will bring.
I’m also on the board of the Blue Angels Gymnastics Club and continue to work with them to create a documented management system for the organized that is scoped to its needs and organizational size. In the absence of documentation, it is easy for chaos to rain, or nothing to be accomplished. Even a non-profit is a business, and when not run as one, it can, and will go out of business.
I’m also still in school, and continue to use skills that are part of the QBoK, from consensus building to team leadership as I work through projects for my courses.
Finally, my family is, and will remain a priority to me. The time that we spend together is precious, and as the kids are still young, I want to give them all of the time that we need. I continue to use quality tools such as kanbans (if you have small children and have ever run out of the essentials like ketchup, you understand why you MUST have things like this on a kanban system for sanity’s sake…) and even 5s.
Best wishes all for a Happy and Healthy New Year! What are your goals for the new year?
