The Future of Quality
One of the fun parts of being a columnist is that you get to opine on whatever strikes your fancy, as long as it's somewhat relevant to the magazine's general content. You also get to make predictions without having to worry about having a ton of supporting data. Sure, I can be wrong, but as long as what I write is moderately informative/interesting/amusing/entertaining, the editors will keep publishing it.
So, having laid the foundation for what comes next, it's time once again to gaze into my crystal ball and make predictions about the future of quality. I periodically have this ridiculous urge to make predictions. Even though I'm frequently wrong (but, hey, who's perfect?), occasionally I get it completely right, so here goes.
Prediction No. 1: After declining for the past decade, quality will take on a new importance within organizations and the government. There are several reasons for this.
First, the much-touted "new global economy" (or "flat world") is finally here. Despite all the wonders it has wrought, quality has suffered. Tainted pet food, poisoned toothpaste, and lead-coated toys are just a few of the more obvious signs that quality basics such as design, auditing, inspection, and calibration are still essential to protecting customers. Although we in the West may overlook such flagrant signs of poor quality as those I mentioned earlier, don't forget that Western companies had these products made for them. We need to do a better job of managing our suppliers and their quality systems.
Second, our aging infrastructure needs help. Collapsing bridges are just one of the more obvious signs that our industrial-revolution infrastructure is old. We need to spend billions of dollars updating and retrofitting it, and we'll want to make sure that it is of the highest quality.
Third, despite your feelings about Al Gore (and who doesn't have strong feelings about Al, one way or the other?) and global warming, there is no doubt that our economy will adjust to it (the hype about global warming that is, not Al). We are already selling hybrid vehicles, installing solar panels on millions of buildings, building ethanol-processing facilities, replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent ones, and investing billions of dollars in other technologies for green energy or energy efficiency. I believe that these changes will continue to accelerate, culminating in a new and nonpolluting energy source that makes oil (and the countries that produce and export it) obsolete.
This will be the equivalent of a new industrial revolution, creating millions of new jobs and powering a dynamic economy. The solution to our global-warming crisis will probably be multifaceted and complex, and there's no doubt that new production facilities and whole new infrastructures will be required. (Let's hope it's the U.S. economy that benefits.) Of course, all this new technology will require quality professionals to make sure that good quality processes are designed, implemented, and followed.
All these new industries, technologies, and professions will require new regulations and new standards. That leads me to prediction No. 2: Standards will become even more widespread and diverse than they are now.
As most of you know, ISO 9001 and ISO 9004 are due to be updated next year. In fact, most of the work on the revisions is already done, and the committee charged with revising the standard--ISO/TC 176--is putting on the finishing touches and making sure that all the different countries involved in approving the documents are happy, which is no easy task. ISO 9001:2008 will then go through several rounds of voting before it is approved.
My sources on the committee tell me that the revisions are pretty minor. This is probably a good thing in terms of keeping companies that are using the standard happy, and it's helpful to keep the standard generic so that it can continue to be used as a basis for industry-specific standards such as ISO/TS 16949 and AS9100.
It will also allow the standard to continue to be widely implemented globally in this new flat world. China already has the most ISO 9001-registered companies in the world, and it still has a long way to go both in registering companies and in improving its certification process.
Of course, this continued focus on standards and the new standards spawned by new technologies will require quality professionals and auditors. It will also require an even greater knowledge of quality principles by management and workers at all levels. This leads us back to my first prediction.
So, prediction No. 3 is that all those people out there who have been predicting the death of quality will have to eat their words.
OK, one final prediction: I'll get a lot of e-mails and posts to my blog telling me how wrong my predictions are. That's OK, as long as you tell me what your predictions are. Post them at www.qualitycurmudgeon.com . Also, don't forget to post your quality improvement tips at www.qualityhacks.com.
Scott M. Paton is Quality Digest's editor at large.
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