Tag: quality intelligence

ASQ FD&C Boston Poster session – 28Feb2023

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.

There were five posters:

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

WCQI Day 4

Last day.

Disciplined Problem Solving Demands Disciplined Communication by Frasier Pruitt

The Minto Pyramid Principle as a tool for problem communication. I guess I shouldn’t be snarky at a tool that came out of McKinsey. I’m sure organized crime has provided many useful tools for society.

Structuring information is critical, there are lots of tools out there to help utilize storytelling, I’m a big fan of the work of Nancy Duarte, and I have praised the A3 many a time for its use as for structured narrative around problems and solutions.

The Two Elements

Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive (MECE) is a concept that we cannot stress enough as it fundamentally gets to issues of cognitive load, and forms a great example of externalizing and constructing.

Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive (MECE)

Great structure, which originally appeared in Quality Progress, for utilizing this with a DMAIC.

Well done structure, this was a great writing training. This could be expanded into a workshop focusing on narrative structure. One recommendation for Fraser would be using a simpler paper for the writing exercise.

The Innovation Management Principles of ISO 56000 by Peter Merrill

Innovation is one of those things that requires system and process to truly be successful. I appreciate the ideas beyond ISO 56000, and the basis of the Innovation Management System

  1. Realization of value; and benefit
  2. Future-focused leaders; curious, courageous
  3. Strategic direction; will change
  4. Culture; creativity and execution to co-exist
  5. Exploiting insights for unmet needs
  6. Managing uncertainty through a portfolio
  7. Adaptability as context changes
  8. Systems approach; serial innovation

Love the focus on how QMS and Innovation interlink.

Closing Keynote by Jose Morey

Okay, I’ve fan-boyed Leonardo da Vinci in the past, but this did not work for me as an ending keynote. It was shallow and rather generic.

But I got my Bingo card completed.

Which is sad.

Good conference. It was great to be back in person.

ASQ 2022 WCQI Day 3 (second half)

Making a Quality Leader: From Theory to Practice

Always a pleasure to hear from the Human Development and Leadership (HDL) technical community. Their competency framework is a great tool that can help many a quality leader as they struggle to build the leadership competencies necessary to strive towards excellence.

Human Development & Leadership Body of Knowledge Model

Having done a lot of comptency frameworks I think the HDL has done a good job building theirs out as a progressive framework. I think a challenge is how do we make it easy to scale up to this more detailed HD&LBok from the QBok, and occasionally the same concept can be discussed a few different ways across different technical community boks and this lack of consistency is a detriment.

Stressing practice as the core part of a competency framework. A good conversation at my table was how often these competencies move back a little as we change roles and organizations.

No competency framework is valuable without a good development plan and the workshop did a great job at introducing how to use one.

Honor Deming’s 14 Points Through Modular Kaizen by Grace Duffy

Grace has always been a mentor who always brings thought provoking topics to the society.

Goes without saying that I’m a fan of the 14 points and the System of Profound Knowledge. I’ve written a lot about Driving out Fear. It ties in a lot of my thoughts about how much of what is happening now in organizational excellence is the evolution from these 14 points.

Looking to the past is an important part of building the future. I think Grace did a great job of respecting the past to drive innovation and new ideas within the quality practice. I loved the care for our past, and the urge to challenge the future in the audience. She really avoided the tendency in some quality circles to obsess about the past (Toyota nuts I am thinking of you) and thus trap the present and stifle the future.

Grace does an amazing job being a pillar of the quality community while still being an iconcolast. When you see her name on the conference session list I always recommend taking the time to attend.

Quality Past & Present

I found most of the videos to be a little personality driven instead of insightful pieces of history. I would hope this session would draw from our history in exciting ways, that was not realized. However the ending charge to create solutions instead of just solving problems is a pivotal one.

2022 Business Meeting

This business meeting drives home the struggle the ASQ has on figuring out what comes next.

As an organization we do not understand what a digital organization looks like. Only 2000 users of the app in the US is embarrassing. Teens can create apps with 100 times more users.

It is nice to admit that actively listening to the members is crucial. I look forward to that consistently happening. We don’t always do a good job of using the tools at the heart of the QBok.

Finances are still rocky, though the Federal Stimulus has left the ASQ in an okay place.

I was actually shocked to hear the chair of the ASQ say it is hard to have metrics for meeting strategic goals. We have entire methodologies dedicated to that.

There are a lot of challenges ahead of us.

WCQI 2022 Day 2

Ugwem Eneyo’s keynote this morning was interesting and the type of inspiring keynote about the importance of quality that I love to hear.

QMS for Data-Driven Decision-Making

Charles Cox starts up being a little by blurring the differences between a Quality Management System (QMS) and an electronic Quality Management System (eQMS), but quickly solidified his topic of how to foundational build digital data into the QMS in an iterative approach for decision data decision-marking and growth.

I appreciate a quality-function-deployment (QFD) approach, a tool-set that I feel folks take a little for granted and don’t utilize enough. Charles co-wrote a useful text on QFD back in the 90s, but I really haven’t read a lot from him in recent years, so this presentation is an excellent example of a practical application, updated for today.

The focus on thinking today about the needs of the future is one that we cannot stress enough. Future sense-making is a core competency for quality professionals and one we do not spend enough time discussing and performing deliberative practice on.

Aligning Organizational Structure with Quality 4.0 by Jane Keathley

Jane co-wrote a thought provoking book on organizational design – Structuring Your Organization For Innovation.

I’m always surprised when folks refer to open office plans in a positive light. The research is pretty definitive on the destructive aspects here.

Thinking about the various organization chart structures is key. In pharma, the regulations are pretty clear on the need to do this, I think a lot of organizations struggle on how to build their organizations for quality. Color me a bit pessimistic here, but I want to see network structures work but have not had the experience.

The four criteria or organizational structures influence on performance: formality, hierarchy, complexity, technology.

Provides three perspectives for organization design: Strategic, Operational, Tactical.

I think there could have been a whole session just on the vision matrix. Same for organizational network analysis. Both of these are tools I do not think enough quality folks are comfortable with. Would make a good workshop.

tratVision Matrix – the Strategic Perspetive

And I got a free book for being a know-it-all about holacracy, which means I now have 2. I’ll keep this copy because I’ll get it signed, and pass off the copy at home.

I should put McKinsey on my junk science bingo card. Support for a criminal enterprise seems to be pretty garbage.

Key message – push decision making and autonomy down as low as possible.

And then I spoke

Good turn out. I was happy with the volume of questions.

FDA Final Guidance on Recalls

The FDA published the final guidance for “Initiation of Voluntary Recalls Under 21 CFR Part 7, Subpart C” in March of 2022.

Nothing new here really, as the FDA has just finalized recommendations that companies make adequate preparations to operations in advance of when a recall may be needed (e.g., prepare and execute a recall communications plan). In addition to these preparations, the FDA recommends that companies consider preparing, maintaining, and documenting written procedures (in paper or electronic format) for initiating a recall and performing actions related to initiating a recall. Moreover, the document addresses how companies should develop a recall strategy and train personnel on executing a recall, as well as how companies should use adequate product coding.