Yesterday the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Division of the ASQ hosted a poster session on the question “What are you proud of in your eQMS? What about your implementation or continued use stands out and that you want to share?”
This was our first try and it also happened in one of the few winter weather events we’ve had this season in Boston, but I was incredibly pleased by the turnout and the five posters were all superlative.
I was actually so busy that the only photo I remembered to take was this one, which was actually 10 minutes before our official start time.
I thought each of the posters brought a different bit to the conversation, and wow were there a lot of conversations going on!
I definitely learned that next time I need to get recorded talks from folks. I had originally planned this, but it didn’t happen mostly because I was just too involved in talking about my poster.
I want to say an immense thank you to our very gracious hosts Veeva Systems, who provided a great spot and a whole lot of hospitality. Will Gould was great to work with and really went above-and-beyond as a host.
With the great attendance and the on-the-site feedback, definitely planning on doing this again. A quick survey to gauge interest and help select a topic is here: https://forms.office.com/r/rUf7VRE6Dy
In 2023 I start my leadership cycle through the Food, Drug and Cosmetic division, starting as chair-elect. This means time to do some content creation! Here’s the first thing I have planned.
The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Division will be hosting a poster share on February 28th from 3-5 pm in Boston, with a cocktail hour afterwards (5-6). The event is being sponsored by Veeva Systems and will be free (big shout out to Veeva!)
We are looking for individuals and companies to share a poster on the theme of “What are you proud of in your eQMS? What about your implementation or continued use stands out and that you want to share?”
If interested in presenting a poster, please complete this form.
We ask that all posters be completed by the 22nd of February so we can get them printed.
We will record the poster presentation and make them available through my.ASQ after the event. Poster presenters must sign a standard ASQ waiver (we will make it available before the event).
An event sign-up will come out in January.
The event is open to all. While I’m thinking the focus will be heavily focused to FD&C and medical device members, other quality professionals will get value.
So please present a poster! I am very excited about this sort of sharing of ideas. I want to keep experimenting with alternative ways to share information and network, and I think the old poster session is something that has renewed utility in this day-and-age. Sort of a speed conference. Easier to create a poster and can be a compact event.
I am pretty excited that Boscon, the local ASQ section’s conference is back on and calling for proposals. So for local folks, a good time to share some best practices and case studies.
BOSCON is an annual quality conference hosted by ASQ Boston. BOSCON is the New England signature event where national and international quality professionals hear speakers discuss different quality topics and network with them. The conference focus for 2022 is Navigating Quality Performance in a post-Pandemic World (Risk management, Impact/risk & mitigation of pandemic on companies, Work-life balance, Resource management, Employee Safety, Virtual/ remote workspace, Customer satisfaction, Supply chain).
Not interested in presenting, but want to participate as a volunteer? Contact Snehal Rane Snehalrane90@gmail.com BOSCON 2022 Chair
B0SCON 2022 PRESENTATION PROPOSAL FORM
We invite you to submit your proposal(s) for BOSCON 2022 oriented towards one of the track areas above. Please provide a concise and clear description of your session topic and the values it provides to our attendees. 50 minutes are provided for your presentation and any Q&A.
KEY DATES
August 15th => Please complete the form referenced below and submit to both Snehalrane90@gmail.com and dmanalan@alum.mit.edu as soon as possible, and no later than August 15th.
September 1st => Applicants will be notified if the submitted proposal was accepted, confirmation requires a signed speaker agreement.
September 15th => Sign speaker agreement and submit.
October 1st => Submit final set of slides by October 1st.
W. Edwards Deming’s substantive influence upon management thinking and practice is evidenced by the number of organizations that have worked to implement his key points, the abundance of books and papers related to his ideas, and the impact of his ideas on the practice of business today. While I’m not a fan of the term Quality Guru, it is hard to miss his impact.
Deming’s main concepts can be summarized as:
Visionary Leadership: The ability of management to establish, practice, and lead a long-term vision for the organization, driven by changing customer requirements, as opposed to an internal management control role.
Internal and External Cooperation: The propensity of the organization to engage in non-competitive activities internally among employees and externally with respect to suppliers.
Learning: The organizational capability to recognize and nurture the development of its skills, abilities, and knowledge base.
Process Management: The set of methodological and behavioral practices emphasizing the management of process, or means of actions, rather than results.
Continuous Improvement: The propensity of the organization to pursue incremental and innovative improvements to processes, products, and services.
Employee Involvement: The degree to which employees of an organization feel that the organization continually satisfies their needs.
Customer Satisfaction: The degree to which an organization’s customers continually perceive that their needs are being met by the organization’s products and services.
Summarizing the System of Profound Knowledge
Almost thirty years after the publication of The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education and we are still striving to realize these. They are still as aspirational and, for many organizations, out of reach today as they were in the eighties. We can argue that a lot of the concepts that swirl around Quality 4.0 is just trying out new technologies to see if we meet those objectives.
We can, and should, discuss the particulars of the System of Profound Knowledge. For me, it makes an excellent departure point for what we should be striving for. By looking to the past we can discover…
I made it to Anaheim, I must admit I am pretty surprised, as I’ve backed out of a few other events this year for reasons of family and health, and while I did do the ISPE Aseptic Conference, being at a WCQI feels almost surreal, especially since this is a fairly small WCQI compared to pre-pandemic years.
I decided to attend the member leader workshops. I thought long and hard, as I have had a rough and rocky road as a member leader during the pandemic and I’ll need to think about what that looks like going forward. I made the decision to attend because I hope the experience will help drive action on my part. Also, in some transparency, I bought my plane ticket without realizing that I would otherwise have a free day, and Disney is not my jam.
I think member leaders have a difficult role. There is a lot of administrative work, on top of the need/desire to drive programming. The changes in ASQs financial structure has made that even harder, with the need to be more revenue-neutral driving a lot of decisions. So member leaders have to find the time to be organizers, raise funds, and make programming happen. All while keeping the day job. I always tend to think this is one of the reasons so many seem to be consultants, who can leverage the time as a way to build a reputation.
Building a reputation as a subject matter expert is a fairly traditional path for many of us. At the heart of a professional organization is the question “How do you build real expertise instead of shallow?” and I think member leaders are one part of the answer to that question.
The future of professional societies strikes me as an interesting one. What is the mix of in-person and remote events? Do you try to do hybrids (my recommendation is no). How do you maintain focus. I was hoping to hear that today, but in general, I do not think I did.
The elephant in the room is that the last few years has seen a lot of change forced on the ASQ. Change often feels like it was done to the membership instead of driven by the membership. The ASQ has really struggled to put the tools and methodologies it advocates for into action. And then, on top of everything, there was the horrible nature of the pandemic, which has slowed down and fragmented change.
For example, the change in the membership model where everyone can join every technical community (divisions) is one that has not been really absorbed beyond the major hit to the budget (again something that feels imposed upon the society).
Perhaps I am some sort of radical and think the technical communities need to be decomposed and restructured, but I think this is a real core thing for my experience. Sometimes it feels like technical communities are fighting for the same volunteers and what any technical community focuses on has more to do with the volunteer base than any rhyme or reason to the QBok.
There was a lot of obvious frustration on the part of the technical community members about their role in the organization.
My.ASQ still remains a major point of contention. I tend to think this stems from a combination of technical design and structure. The design need to push technical communities had led to some real balkanization within the structure, which makes it difficult to find content. Add to the fact the tool is not very flexible in how it manages the content and we have a painful adoption three years later.
Technical communities really exist to drive content creation. But I sometimes feel they are more content silos. Content curation is a topic from and center in a lot of member leaders’ minds.
I’m always disappointed when quality professionals get together and there is no structure, no facilitation. When we don’t use the tools our profession is based on. An over-reliance on brainstorming and discussion I think really limits the value of these events as it feels like we are swirling around the same topics.
I attended the following three breakout sessions.
Young professionals
Less than 10% of the membership is under 35, with students being around 5%. I think the central question for all professional societies is how do we change this? Let’s be honest, I am not a spring chicken at 51 and I sometimes feel young at ASQ events.
I think it’s telling on the communication issue that the NexGen section on my.ASQ, touted during this talk, has 3 posts, the last in February.
Mentorship programs are a lot of work for the mentors involved (and the mentees). How do we incentive folks to do it? What does real mentorship look like?
The Power of Collaboration
The ASQ and ASQE split (one of those things done to members, not from members) certainly are central to the question of collaboration within the ASQ. At the heart of collaboration is the central question of content creation.
I feel the ASQ is suffering from a lack of a strong model here. The connections between the QBok and the member organizations (technical and geographical) are weak in many places. There is no real definition of activity scope, guidance framework, and knowledge base.
The central question for collaboration in the ASQ is how do we bring more content that is valuable to our members, which means we need to do a better job of identifying what members need.
What
What is this?
My thoughts on what this means for the ASQ?
Guidance Framework
The guidance framework typically involves multiple worldviews. The same subject matter can be studied from different worldviews, and the theories around a given subject can be interpreted differently from different worldview perspectives.
The ASQ as a whole, the principles of the profession.
Knowledge Base
The data, theories, and methodologies that drive the discipline
This is the Qbok and the technical communities that serve specific methodologies and approaches (Lean, Statistics, HD&L, QMD, TWEF, Six Signa, etc)
Activity Scope
The range of activities in a disciple, including the professional practice.
These are the industry segment specific technical communities
There is a real tension right now in that the board of the ASQ and certainly headquarters, wants to see the technical communities generating more content, more IP. But many in the technical communities are feeling tense, and a little abused by the process.
I think a central question is how do we connect folks with questions to subject matter experts who can answer those questions. my.ASQ hasn’t really solved that issue. And something like Connex is really a marketplace to sell consulting services. This leads us to the third breakout session I attended.
Subject Matter Experts of Tomorrow
Building expertise is a particular focus of mine, and I think it is really important for the ASQ to think about what areas we need subject matter experts (SME) in, and how to leverage those SMEs.
I think we really grapple with just what topics are valuable to quality. Frankly, I think we haven’t reached the promise of the core, the foundational knowledge. We need to avoid thinking sexy “whats” are the key to a profession that focuses more on the hows and whys.
Want to call out the facilitators for using a tool to facilitate the session, while still brainstorming it made a difference.
The central question to answer the question about how we can connect knowledge experts with the skills necessary to be an effective SME?
The key is deliberative practice. As an organization, we need to have a deliberative practice pathway that builds skills in speaking, presentation, and develop area expertise. While we cannot directly give most people a job opportunity to do something, we can look for other opportunities to further e
Closing Thoughts
I have many questions, many thoughts, and no good answers. I waited until after the conference to make sure I had a chance to reflect.
Investigations of a Dog 