The conference was attended by more than 90 Quality professionals, spearheaded by ASQ Bangalore LMC team members, graced by the eminent speakers and powered by the valuable projects presented by esteemed Organization teams. The theme for the day was “Quality for Business Impact” which in itself created an atmosphere of Quality empowerment amongst the Quality community.

The Day’s events and Key Highlights:

A formal kick off followed by a welcome address set the stage for the day’s proceedings. It was a daylong event starting from 9.40 am until 4.30 pm having everyone glued to the ideas and best practices and energetic interactions by all present. The entire program was compered by Mr. Prakash V, Quality Head, Tech Mahindra.

The event began with the stimulating talk by Roopa , GM Quality, Axis Cades who with the theme of “Quality for Business Impact”, emphasized on the “Quality Management Principles” and the strong pillars from Customer Focus, Leadership and people engagement, and the need for a Risk based approach that will enable a proactive risk identification and opportunities associated. She also clearly highlighted the fact this approach will benefit the organization and individual who will be empowered and have a lot of accountability. She also explained the ISO 9001:2015 key clauses and their strategic alignment to business decision.

Mr. K P Sharma, Head GSC-CS & Quality Schneider Electric delivered an electrifying talk on the Future of Quality, Its Business Impact and how the Quality leaders should gear for the next Gen Quality needs. He shared several real examples and highlighted the much needed change for the Quality function in embedding technology into Quality. This he emphasized can be achieved through Digitization. The Quality function should understand the dynamics of the business environment and align with the business. He very clearly articulated on the need for a strategic future Quality organization. He concluded stating that Digitization is the key to a long term futuristic and engaged Quality community.

The enthusiasm and participation of the group was further enhanced with the great talk by Mr. Vijay Shrinivas, VP – Quality, Quest Global. Vijay took everyone through the Quality and Excellence journey of Quest Global from a challenging phase to a more evolved and sustainable phase of Customer Quality. The story of Quest Improvement journey unfolded with building an integrated model with customer and a robust internal processes. The systems and processes with the house of Quality structure and building Key metrics, empowering employees and implementing key control measures were some of the important improvement stages of Quest journey. He concluded by emphasizing to the team on the need for a risk based approach and the importance of employee participation.

The next interesting speaker was Mr. Gurdarshan Singh, Quality Head, Consumer unit, Wipro Ltd. He engaged the group on Data authenticity and Usage. He very clearly articulated the challenges faced with the variety of data sources and the complexity of data, the need to validate, verify and ensure the accuracy of data. The focus on technology and training is essential in building a robust data management system. He also shared some of the key insights into some of the good practices followed by Wipro is ensuring this.

The Day was also packed with very powerful and impactful project presentation by 6 Dynamic teams from various organizations. The presentations ranged from identifying root cause in field failure by applying Lean Six sigma principle (GE Healthcare), Efficiency in spare part management for power generation (Quest Global), Enhancing Quality and impacting behavioural changes by creating Ownership, Responsibility & Accountability in hearts and minds of people. (“I OWN” by Schneider Electric), Applying Six sigma principles for productivity improvement in IT services (Wipro), Achieving Comprehensive Quality Improvement in PDE (Quest Global) and finally a project on Kizuna SSSPS Test Capability (GE). The application of statistical tools and techniques and team work was clearly demonstrated in all the projects presented.

The last speaker for the day was Preeth Cavery, CEO Symbio Consults. She presented the ASQ Global state of Quality research “Discoveries 2016”. The report explained the geographies considered for survey. The themes of 2016 and the characteristics of World class companies in Quality. Insights were also provided on what are the areas companies should focus on to become a world class company.

The conference was conceptualized and supported by the Bangalore LMC council team which comprises of Mrs Mamatha from GE, Chinmoy, Vinod, Sreedhar from TCS, Vijay from Quest along with Manjunath Makam (Chair- ASQ bangalore), Anshuman Tiwari & Dhiresh Kumar Pradhan.

The world Quality month conference was concluded with a Vote of Thanks by Dhiresh Kumar Pradhan, Chair (Events & Conference) - ASQ Bangalore LMC.

Special Thanks to Wipro for their impeccable hospitality