Quality Alchemist (品質煉金術師): ASQ World Conference

The ASQ World Conference was three day event. The last day morning workshop named “But are you certain? Applying Measurement Uncertainty in Medical Labs”. Minda and I joined the workshop for enhancing our knowledge of Measurement Uncertainty (MU) in Medical Laboratory on 18 May 2011.

The workshop was presented by Dr. Lisa M. Walters (Healthy Solutions Quality Consulting). She provided an overview of the CLSI initiatives in establishing MU, as well as the expectations of accreditation bodies with regard to ISO 15189 in medical laboratory testing.

She briefed the Managerial and Technical requirement of ISO 15189 and especially in MU. In technical requirement section 5.6, MU was stated in “Assuring quality of examination procedures”.

Dr. Walters also mentioned two approach of MU. One was Bottom Up and the other was Top Down. Bottom Up approach was like GUM that identified all source of uncertainty and determine the expanded uncertainty. However, the Top Down approach was found out your measurement system’s SD or CV (min. 6 month) and then determine your system bias, as well as, calculate the combined and expanded uncertainty.

Then Dr. Walters explained the different between Verification and Validation.

Verification concerned the efficiency (Doing it right?)

Validation concerned the effectiveness (Doing the right things?)

After that some examples were demonstrated and discussed.

The closing session and featured speaker session was performed. The speaker was Mr. Rob Bryant (Senior Vice President of Quality and Lean Six Sigma, Computer Sciences Corporation). Mr. Rob Bryant’s topic entitled “Applying the Concept Employee Engagement to your Quality Program.

Bryant was a renowned motivational speaker and Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt who draw from his personal triumph of overcoming paralysis after a 55-foot fall in 1982 and subsequently achieving two world records: longest walk by a paraplegic (24 miles) and rowing 3,280 miles on a row machine.

Mr. Rob Bryant explained his company’s’ strategy on Lean Six Sigma and Human Sigma.

He overcome the difficulty on himself and change his life after accident.

He observed the employee and customer were very related and considerable. It was recommended to engage employees to achieve the company goal.

Mr. Roy Bryant proposed to apply Lean first and then took a Six Sigma to change initiatives. In order to build the customer confidence, the following items should be built.

1. Building Integrity

2. Building Pride

3. Building Passion

He explained that every employee-customer interaction represented an opportunity to build customer emotional connection or to diminish it.

I took a photo with Mr. Rob Bryant outside the conference room.

The last event was the selection of the International Team Excellence Award Process Presentation. I was the only international team-recognition process of its kind in the United States. It was held annually at the ASQ World Conference.

The Bronze Winner was Telefonica Argentina team.