Seminar on Future of Quality Study 2011

In order to celebrate World Quality Month 2011, we were pleased to invite Mr. Tommy Tam (Director - New Market Development, ASQ-Global) to give us a seminar entitled "2011 Future of Quality Study - Emergence" on 21st Nov 2011.

In the beginning, Mr. Tommy Tam explained "What's Futuring" and ASQ's Future Study Methodology. "Futuring" is a structured look into the future and aims at enhancing anticipatory skills. No view of the future would be accurate. However, identified forces could provide a premium in rapidly changing environments.

ASQ Future Study performs every 3 years. There are more than 150 participants from 32 different countries for identifying the Forces of Change from Feb to Mar 2011. The study used Delphi technique and seeded with 43 forces from reference sources and past studies. Participants needed to pick 10 forces for three rounds and explained why. In final round, selected forces would be ranking in order.

Mr. Tommy Tam introduced the top ONE is Global Responsibility (It could be considered as Globalization plus Social Responsiblity (SR)). Understanding of SR can realize its positively impact on revenue and margin.

Then Mr. Tam described 2011 Forces of Change one by one as follows:

1. Global Responsibility (e.g. ISO 26000)

2. Consumer Awareness (e.g. Internet & Social Media vastly increasing knowledge)

3. Globalization (e.g. Form opportunity, to threat, to irreversible reality; and global supply chains)

4. The Increasing Rate of Change (e.g. Emerging technologies such as bio and nano; ever shorter product/service lifecycles)

5. The Workforce of the Future (e.g. New notions of talent, work workplace and learning)

6. An Aging Population (e.g. Quality of Life considerations)

7. 21st Century Quality (e.g. Quality differential - a competitive advantage)

8. Innovation (e.g. Increased rate of change demands)

The study caused some possible implications to Quality, Organizations and Quality Practitioners below.

- Quality will evolve to respond to pressures of everything changing faster.

- Enterprise Quality is moving from quality of product to quality of management and enables sustainability.

- Quality Leaders become expert in system based solutions and as mentor/coach/guide, as well as, to develop tools that support speed.

Finally, Mr. Tam summarized that "Futuring" is a tool for anticipating and Quality is being shaped by powerful forces. When we are knowing the forces, we can explore how quality will change.

I represented HKSQ to present a souvenir to Mr. Tommy Tam.

Then I introduced the ANQ Congress 2012 Hong Kong to all participants.

After the seminar, we invited Mr. Tommy Tam and Mr. Lee (Chairman of Shenzhen Association for Quality (SZAQ) ) to have dinner with HKSQ ex-co members.

(Left: Mr. Lee, Dr. Aaron Tong (Past Chairman of HKSQ), Mr. Tommy Tam and I)

Reference:

ASQ Global - http://asq.org/global/

ASQ World Conference - Forces of Change - http://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2011/05/asq-world-conference-forces-of-change.html

HKSQ Celebrates World Quality Month - http://www.hksq.org/world_quality_month.htm

ANQ Congress 2012 Hong Kong - http://www.anq2012.org/