ASQ Influential Voices - November

November post “World Quality Month: Accelerating Quality”

Paul Borawski, ASQ CEO

 

November, World Quality Month

This month is a month of celebration for all Quality Professionals - November is the World Quality Month. The World Quality Day has been celebrated in November 8 with a lot of worldwide initiatives.

Celebrate this month! Celebrate it with Quality!

It is well known that the current economic recession is affecting, in different ways, organizations and, in particular, the implementation of activities and practices of Quality. Nevertheless, most organizations continue to highlight the commitment to Quality as a competitive advantage in the global market and an "anti-crisis" strategy.

An organization that provides goods or services of high Quality can be affected in two ways – with products and services of high Quality and with a better performance than the ones of the competitors, the organization could improve their financial results; secondly, when an organization is able to achieve an higher state Quality has more propensity to substantially change their organizational culture.

In the present context that the world is experiencing, we need urgently that our organizations, public and private, achieve a higher level of Quality. For that, it is necessary the involvement and contribution of all Quality Professionals, because Quality Professionals should act as change managers and drivers of excellence, with the ability to anticipate the situations and to involve the organizations top management.

An excellent organization is that organization that achieves superior results through continuous improvement of its products and services and exceeds the customers’ expectations, which is recognized by his peers and is sustainable. It is not easy to have an excellent organization, but it is a challenge that must be pursued by all.

ASQ Influential Voices - July

July post “The Intersection of Quality and Social Responsibility”

Paul Borawski, ASQ CEO

A company that has child work but has very good quality products, is a company with quality? In my opinion, and I think for all the readers, no. Thus, nowadays we cannot only control the quality of our products but also we should be concerned about the environmental impacts, the social responsibility principles, the safety of our workers, among others. Only in that situation we can state that our company is a company with Quality, in a global perspective of the concept!

In a research project that I have been involved in Portugal related to social responsibility issues, we have found evidence that according to a large number of Portuguese managers that belong to organizations with a certified management system, stakeholders’ satisfaction is significantly higher when a social responsibility programme is present, as suggested by Freeman’s stakeholder theory.

It is important that our companies become more concern about all these issues and not only be focused in the quality of their products, in order to satisfy all the stakeholders involved in the business.

References

Fonseca, L., Ramos, A., Rosa, A., Braga, A.C., Sampaio, P., “Impact of social responsibility programs in stakeholder satisfaction: an empirical study of Portuguese managers perceptions”, Journal of US-China Public Administration, Vol.9, Nº5, pp. 596-590, 2012.

Dr Taguchi passed away

"Dear All Quality Professionals,

I would like to inform all that Dr. Taguchi passed away. The sad news was informed by Dr. Kano. I posted our three ex-chairmen's photo with Dr. Taguchi for memory at http://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2012/06/remember-dr-genichi-taguchi-creator-of.html

I'm sure Dr. Taguchi will live in the heart of everyone of us.

With deepest sorrow,
Lotto LAI
HKSQ"

ASQ Influential Voices - May

May post “The Government/Quality Puzzle”

Paul Borawski, ASQ CEO

 

 

In 2010, I have the pleasure to participate in a research project that was promoted by the Portuguese Association for Quality to produce the first, and until now, the unique, Portuguese study about the Future of Quality – “The Future of Quality in Portugal”. The team was coordinated by Professor Pedro Saraiva, Full Professor of the University of Coimbra and distinct member of the International Academy for Quality.

 

 

Three main conclusions related to public policies that had arisen from the study were the following:
- It should be developed and implemented a new generation of public policies in order to promote Quality in Portugal.

- It should be developed and implemented a National Quality Strategy, based on a National Quality Agenda, in order to promote the commitment of the different players to achieve a sustainable economic and social development.

- Additionally, it should be established a set of regional mechanisms in order to promote Quality locally. 

 

 

In Portugal we have excellent examples of public organizations and institutions that adopt and promote Quality, based on ISO 9001 certification or in the implementation of the EFQM Model. However we need more excellent examples to promote Quality, at a national level first, and at international level in the middle term.

ASQ Influential Voices - March

March post “How do you “sell” quality?”
Paul Borawski, ASQ CEO

Because of my job as a Professor, I have the chance to be, each single day, a “Quality Evangelist” – in my classes and in the conferences and workshops that I attend around the world. Additionally, with my research and publications that I and my students conduct everyday in order to help companies to better understand and better use the quality concepts, I try to help the companies and the society to understand that we will not have a future if we do not have quality and that the future of quality belongs to us and depends on us. One of the most important contributes that we need in the forthcoming years is that the companies top management and the quality professionals use the same “language” – when this takes place we will assist to the full integration of quality in
the companies management – the “ideal scenario”.

Quality should be continuously understood, assimilated and implemented, both in public and private organizations. However, each one of us is responsible to push and pull quality forward, doing always more and better.

Based on a research project that we have conducted in Portugal entitled “The Future of Quality in Portugal” (Saraiva et al., 2010), I would like to point out that:

- The trends of the Quality Movement will be gradual and aligned among all the countries.
- We will assist to the implementation of a more globalize quality among the organizations.
- The public policies with impact in the quality area should be improved, being more intense and more close to the quality promoters.
- The organizations will be the key interested part in the promotion of the Future of Quality.

As I’m an engineer, I like to use some complex mathematical expressions in order to solve problems. However, I think that the Future of Quality will significantly depend on the fulfillment level of the following simple mathematical expression (Saraiva et al., 2010):

Future of Quality = Do it well x Do it better x Do it different

References

Saraiva, P., Orey, J. Sampaio, P., Reis, M., Cardoso, C., Pinheiro, J., Tomé, L., “The Future of Quality in Portugal”, Portuguese Association for Quality, Lisbon, 2010.

ASQ Influential Voices - February

I will begin my post thanking to the American Society for Quality (ASQ) the opportunity to be one of the 2012 ASQ Influential Voices – it is a pleasure and an honor work and learn with the Society. By doing so I have the opportunity to give my small contribute to raise the Worldwide Voice of Quality! Monthly I will comment and discuss Paul Borawski, ASQ CEO, posts (http://asq.org/blog/2012/02/new-bloggers-stem-more/), together with other quality professionals around the world. I hope that my readers can enjoy my contributions and thoughts and by the end could also learn something.

Concerning the February issue (“How can we, those who understand, use, and love science and technology, pass it along? I invite your thoughts! For those outside the U.S., how is STEM (science, technology, engineering and math related careers) taught and encouraged in your county?”), in Portugal there is a general trend that shows that the Portuguese youth do not like math issues. In the past few years the high school math final exams scores are becoming lower and there is an evident decreasing trend. Some of our students have developed “natural protection mechanisms” against math topics.

After medicine, the engineering graduation courses are the most popular one in Portugal. There are a lot of young students that will be the future of the Portuguese engineering. However, some of them have a lot of difficulties in those curricula that are related to mathematical issues. This is a very important obstacle that I and my colleagues as Professors have to face and pass through, in order to help our students to become successful professionals.

The “math problem” is not only a reality in our students. It is also a problem in our companies. I am supervising a project in order to analyze the use of quality tools in the Portuguese companies and the preliminary results show us that our companies are using only those tools that do not require much knowledge and that are very easy to understand. The tools used by the Portuguese companies point to the existence of low skills to select the appropriate tools to help maximize the efficiency of processes inside the organization.

I think that we have a cultural problem that will not change in one day but could be reduced in some years if we do a good “home work”.


Paulo Sampaio
I’m part of the ASQ Influential Voices program. While I receive an honorarium from ASQ for my commitment, the thoughts and opinions expressed on my blog are my own.

TMQ - Qualidade: Call for papers - Prorrogação da data limite: 15 MARÇO

* * * PRORROGAÇÃO DA DATA LIMITE PARA ENVIO DOS ARTIGOS – 15 MARÇO 2012* * *

Caríssimos,

Estamos a aceitar artigos para integrar o próximo número da nossa Revista TMQ Qualidade e está aberta a fase de call for papers para este número da Revista, com a data limite de submissão até 29 de Fevereiro de 2012 15 de Março de 2012.

Prosseguindo a adoptada perspectiva de multidisciplinaridade das edições anteriores, com este número continuamos a aceitar artigos referentes às várias vertentes da temática da Qualidade e outras áreas afins. Nesse sentido, gostaríamos de convidá-lo a submeter as suas recentes investigações. Informamos que o próximo número desta Revista, com previsão de lançamento em Junho de 2012, no III Encontro de Tróia - 2012, terá um novo
formato electrónico.

Aceitam-se para submissão artigos na língua portuguesa, espanhola e inglesa.

Se estiver interessado, poderá submeter o(s) seu(s) artigo(s) através do seguinte endereço electrónico: alvaro.rosa@iscte.pt


A. Ramos Pires (antonio.pires@estsetubal.ips.pt)
(Editor coordenador)

Margarida Saraiva (msaraiva@uevora.pt) e Álvaro Rosa (alvaro.rosa@iscte.pt)
(Editores)