What would the Quality Masters have said?

Our 2nd week continued discussion about effective organizations which lead into the Quality Masters; prominent individuals who stood out as key figures in quality. The methodologies, philosophies, and teachings of Shewhart, Deming, Juran, Feigenbaum, Ishikawa, Crosby and Taguchi have positively impacted 1,000's of organizations over many decades across the globe.

If you have ever watched the program "Iron Chef America", you might recognize where we headed with our class activity. Teams of 3 to 4 students first selected a Quality Master (Iron Chef) from Chapter 2, then sent a member to the front table to choose from many index cards listing effective organization success factors and characteristics (ingredients). These factors would be used to present to our expert panel at least three responses (plated dishes) representing their quality master's (QM's) philosophies.

An Iron QM competition isn't complete without a secret organization (ingredient), unveiled as British Petroleum. The teams had 10 minutes to prepare their QM's response to the problem, "What advice would you give to BP leadership, so that if followed, would have changed istory by preventing the gulf oil explosion/spill?" Students needed to maintain their quality master's perspective in the advice response.

Ten minutes is not a lot of time to prepare, but working under pressure to meet the objective is a challenge that would not have scared an Iron QM! Ultimately, team members became more familiar with their quality master through the fact gathering and presentation building process. The Iron QM team presentations were creative, unique and also met the objective to describe "What would the Quality Masters have said?"

by Sandy Feola