Quality and Innovation

Want to find out what Quality 4.0 really is — and start realizing the benefits for your organization? If so, check out the October 2018 issue of ASQ’s Quality Progress, where my new article (“Let’s Get Digital“) does just that.

Quality 4.0 asks how we can leverage connected, intelligent, automated (C-I-A) technologies to increase efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction: “As connected, intelligent and automated systems are more widely adopted, we can once again expect a renaissance in quality tools and methods.” In addition, we’re working to bring this to the forefront of quality management and quality engineering practice at Intelex.

Quality 4.0 Evolution

The progression can be summarized through four themes. We’re in the “quality as discovery” stage today:

• Quality as inspection: In the early days, quality assurance relied on inspecting bad quality out of items produced. Walter A. Shewhart’s methods for statistical process control (SPC) helped operators determine whether variation was due to random or special causes.
• Quality as design: Next, more holistic methods emerged for designing quality in to processes. The goal is to prevent quality problems before they occur. These movements were inspired by W. Edwards Deming’s push to cease dependence on inspection, and Juran’s Quality by Design.
• Quality as empowerment: By the 1990’s, organizations adopting TQM and Six Sigma advocated a holistic approach to quality. Quality is everyone’s responsibility and empowered individuals contribute to continuous improvement.
• Quality as discovery: Because of emerging technologies, we’re at a new frontier. In an adaptive, intelligent environment, quality depends on how:
  • quickly we can discover and aggregate new data sources,
  • effectively we can discover root causes and
  • how well we can discover new insights about ourselves, our products and our organizations.”

Read more at http://asq.org/quality-progress/2018/10/basic-quality/lets-get-digital.html  or download the PDF (http://asq.org/quality-progress/2018/10/basic-quality/lets-get-digital.pdf)