This is the second part of the dialogue with Ian Dalling. In this part Ian discusses Quality 4.0, the skills needed by quality professional in the future and Integrated Management Systems.

Ian Dalling is the Director of the “Unified Management Solutions”. It specializes in integrated approaches to quality and risk management. He is a Chartered Mechanical and Electrical Engineer, a fellow of the Charter Quality Institute, and a fellow of the International Institute of Safety and Risk Management. He holds degrees in engineering and physics. From 2007 to 2020 he chaired the Chartered Quality Institute Integrated Management Special Interest Group. He led the development of the world’s first universal system standard (MSS1000).

Ian Dalling’s career commenced in 1962 working for the Central Electricity Generating Board in various posts within nuclear power plants embracing operations, planning, management service, and quality management. In 1989 he moved to the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority Safety and Reliability Directorate as a risk management analyst and consultant. In 1999 he started his own consulting firm. His clients include companies in the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe, India, and China.

Q3 We hear a lot about Quality 4.0, how would you define Quality 4.0?

Forgive me for being blunt, but I would not attempt define and give oxygen to Quality 4.0 as I believe it is an ill-conceived notion that further complicates management when our objective ought to be to simplify it and make it universally accessible and appealing to all those who can and need to benefit from its study and application. It appears Quality 4.0 is yet another confusing conceptual contrivance and quality rebranding, which this time is a naïve model aligned with a crude fourth rung of a crude sequential industrial revolutions model originally presented at the 2011 Hanover Fair. It is a folly bolted to a folly at a very critical time in humankind’s history!

The industrial revolution started in the UK in the early 18^th century marked by ground-breaking inventions such as the steam engine and manufacturing machines that collectively transformed manufacturing productivity. It subsequently spread into Europe and the US.  It was a revolution causing a major economic and social upheaval that changed the global landscape and has continued to evolve on many fronts simultaneously with multiple advances in science and technology, and not four simplistic sequential sub revolutions capable of being classified into four discreet pigeonholes. So complicated is the birth and subsequent evolution of the industrial revolution that historians continually debate it. I believe the four level industrial revolutions model to be an oversimplification, misrepresentation and dumbing down of history. The evolution of global industrial expertise and industrialisation was at no time homogeneous, and the evolving nature and behaviour of organisations of the world similarly so. We all have a responsibility to communicate history as truthfully as we can and certainly not re-engineer it or dumb it down for our own purposes.

It appears to me to compound this folly by subsequently using this primitive naive construct as a framework for the Quality 4.0 model to hang some of its wares on. It places Quality 4.0 on a foundation of sand and goes on to define a collection of incoherent and illogical links.

While quality management philosophy, principles and methodologies have developed over time, their relevance and application, like any pure knowledge, is not impeded by space time although the circumstances enabling its application can be extremely diverse throughout space-time. Why should the basics of good quality management or indeed management in general, be potentially any less applicable to our bronze age ancestor than to us today or to future generations?

Quality 4.0 fragments knowledge and raises entropy by failing to integrate management methodologies and through its restricted scope.  It fails to define universal quality management principles that transcend space and time.

The ASQ’s apparent Quality 4.0 perspective promotes a blinkered widget centric and AI fanciful model of the future. This contrasts with the concept of an organisation as a superorganism interacting with others to equitably satisfy stakeholders. It seems to ignore big global problems and the quality of management. It narrowly talks about customers rather than stakeholders, ignores risk and suggests a widget centric idea of ‘quality’. For example, the ASQ website states “Quality 4.0 is more than technology. It’s a new way for quality professionals to manage quality with the digital tools available today and understanding how to apply them and achieve excellence through quality.” Is this more than picking up a power tool after a manual tool, like me in the 1960s progressing from a slide rule and log tables, to learning computer machine code and then more advanced computer science. Everything has evolved and progressed, but we do not talk about Mathematics 4.0 or Physics 4.00 or Risk 4.00 like the latest management fad. If quality professionals want to be taken seriously and respected, they need to up their game to avoid ridicule.

Many commentators have said that ‘quality’ is a damaged brand and it is currently getting a lot of flak from commercial organisations through failure to streamline certification processes and align their services with the needs of organisations. It is puzzling why a tinkering of the quality brand like Quality 4.0 was proposed which will further alienate directors and managers by quality professionals failing to communicate in plain language. I have never been comfortable with quality being defined and promoted via ill-conceived slogans rather than a validated integrated coherent body of knowledge and methodology built on a firm foundation of principles devoid of snake oil.

Q4 What impact will Quality 4.0 have on the quality profession?

If quality professionals are to survive, flourish and be respected as a valuable and trusted profession they need to communicate simply in plain language and not use slogans and conceptual contrivances loved by the marketing profession. They must take great care not to lay themselves open to being accused of snake-oil salesman.

Management is about equitably satisfying stakeholders needs, expectations and aspirations while making the best use of resources, which is the foundation principle of integrated management. The further a quality definition drifts from this definition the more the quality profession will be harmed and endanger itself to extinction.

Quality professionals tend to shoehorn ‘quality’ into management terminology even when it is not needed e.g. what aspect of planning is not ‘quality planning’. Presumably this habit of tagging quality to everything is motivated by a silo attitude and presumption that quality management somehow runs in parallel in a non-integrated way to normal management, risk management and all other dimensions of management. It may even be an attempt to brand everything to do with organisational improvement in terms of ‘quality’. I once heard a past CQI CEO say to an audience of members that “we need to stop others eating our lunch”. I take the view that if we are to survive and flourish all management disciplines need to be invited to the lunch table and encouraged to cooperate and be open to being coordinated around a common improvement goal.

It appears from the ASQ website and others, that the Quality 4.0 contrivance is still in its early stages of development, work in progress with largely empty shelves, and not yet widely known or accepted as meaningful or valuable e.g. nothing yet on Wikipedia. I believe it is an ill-conceived embryo project that if not abandoned now will grow into a monster which will deflect attention from where it is really needed and harm the credibility and viability of the future quality profession.

Q5 What competences will future quality professionals need?

Future quality professionals, or their professional bodies, need to be more than blinkered ISO9001 one trick ponies, if they want to avoid becoming anachronistic and an endangered species. The warning signs are already there in the metrics of business satisfaction.

We should not automatically assume that there will be prominent single entity personalised quality functions in organisations or that there will be a discreet clearly recognisable quality profession with its own professional bodies. Quality will always be an issue where goods and services are delivered, but how quality is promoted, nurtured and managed may well be organised in new novel ways. We already see considerable variation in existing quality arrangements.

I believe a future quality professional, whatever form and name it may be known by, will need a broader range and depth of understanding of an organisation’s structures and processes and how its purpose is delivered in an optimal way to equitably satisfy stakeholder needs, expectations and aspirations while making the best use of resources i.e. understand the principles of integrated management without boundaries and their application. There will not be a one size fits all quality professional but a range of generalists and specialists able to operate individually and collectively to meet the needs of organisations of any type and size, just as in other professions.

They will need to:

• Know what management tools are available and how to select and apply them where needed.
• Understand the principles of integrated prospect and risk management – the management of balancing stakeholder upsides and downsides operating under uncertainty.
• Be able to interact with teams within the organisation acting in a lead role or as a catalyst to help it achieve objectives, continually improve, and make informed rational decisions.
• Be able to assess stakeholder satisfaction, stakeholder ability to influence and to exercise power, and help optimise stakeholder satisfaction and resolve conflicts.
• Understand what makes organisations succeed and fail and the corresponding indicators.
• Be able to communicate using plain simple language at all levels within an organisation.
• Be able to provide informed advice and seek expert advice from others.
• Be able to mentor and deliver training and education.
• Have project management skills.
• Know the limits of their expertise.
• Be able to understand standards and achieve their compliance for the context of the organisation and its stakeholders.
• Be able to design, implement and maintain a fully integrated management system without boundaries.

All the above will, however, count for nothing if the future of the quality professional is not ethical, professional, and totally trustworthy. Future quality professionals, whatever form they take, must be an integral part of the organisation’s conscience. They must have the courage to express conflicting views and able to challenge others thinking and remind others of their ethical duty.

Q6 Why was the Integrated Management Community, which you chair, created?

The Integrated Management Community (IMC) was created In August 2020 to facilitate the promotion and development of all aspects of joined-up management thinking, problem solving and decision making. It acts as a discussion and networking forum open to everyone interested in Integrated Management and Integrated Management Systems.  The IMC Hub continues research and development work previously performed by the CQI Integrated Management SIG which the CQI abruptly and surprisingly shut down and mothballed in August 2020. The IMC Hub work includes the development of Integrated Management papers, methodologies, guides, and universal management standards e.g. the Universal Management System Standard MSS1000 published in 2014.

I believe that over the last couple of decades management silo disciplines have been expanding their scope of theory and its application partly because of the realisation that their aspect of management becomes more valuable when it is integrated into management as a whole, but also to extend the prestige and influence of their silo discipline members. I believe that there is a lot of common thinking and practice across the silos that is not always obvious and is even obscured because of the varied and often ill-defined non-universal concepts and language. When I prepared the drafts of the Universal Management System Standard MSS1000 a lot of effort and attention was put into the creation of a universal hierarchical taxonomy of mutually consistent management concepts and definitions.

The world is facing enormous challenges including COVID19, global warming, toxic pollution, shrinking biodiversity, genetically modified organisms, stakeholder conflict etc that demand integrated thinking, solutions and management. The Integrated Management Community (IMC) was created to facilitate this urgent need for the integration and rationalisation of management theory and practice to solve these problems for the good of humankind by enabling all the silo disciplines to freely participate in achieving shared societal goals.

Everyone with an interest in Integrated Management is warmly invited to join the IMC via the  IMC LinkedIn Group.

Bio Ian Dalling

Ian Dalling is the Director of ‘Unified Management Solutions’, that specialises in integrated approaches to quality and risk management. He is a Chartered Mechanical and Electrical Engineer, a fellow of the Chartered Quality Institute, a fellow of the International Institute of Safety and Risk Management and holds degrees in engineering and physics. He is a retired management consultant and chair of the Integrated Management Community.

Ian’s career commenced in 1962 working for the Central_Electricity_Generating_Board in various posts within nuclear power plants embracing operations, planning, management services, quality management. In 1989 he moved to the United_Kingdom_Atomic_Energy_Authority Safety and Reliability Directorate (SRD) as a risk management analyst and consultant.

His career has spanned the design, construction, commissioning, operation, and decommissioning of conventional and nuclear power plants, as well as providing a wide range of quality/risk management consultancy in other major hazard industries including oil and gas, electrical power distribution, rail, construction and medical devices. He started his own management consultancy in 1999 delivering services for clients in the UK and internationally in Eastern Europe, India, and China for national and international clients. He chaired the Chartered Quality Institute Integrated Management Special Interest Group  from 2007 until 2020 when it was morphed into the Integrated Management Community. Ian led the international team that created the world’s first universal management system standard without boundaries (MSS1000). He has published many integrated management papers and articles.

His roles have included:

• Leading operational planning team during the construction and commissioning of the Dungeness B Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor nuclear power plant.
• European Notified Body Quality Manager certifying machinery and medical devices under European Product Directives.
• Serving on the European Process Safety Centre Committee, and the British Standards  steering committee for BS 8800:1996, a guide on the management of occupational health and safety. BS8800 informed OHSAS18001 which informed ISO45001.
• Leading a team assessing the 120-year decommissioning programme for the Winfrith Steam Generating Heavy Water Reactor in the UK.
• Assessing UK nuclear weapons assembly and maintenance safety culture.
• Developing crisis and emergency plans for a regional electricity company.
• Member of international team that assessed the safety of the Lithuanian Ignalina RBMK nuclear power plant following the Chernobyl_disaster.
• Providing systems analyst support during the development of safety critical software.

Publications

Ian Dalling has published many articles on integrated management and the universal management system standard MSS1000 in a range of publications including CERM Risk Insights, the International Institute of Risk Management (IIRSM), the Chartered Quality Institute (CQI), and the International Register of Certified Auditors (IRCA) Journals.

Publishing a book on integrated management is still on Ian ‘s to-do list. The closest to fulfilling this aspiration has been the drafting of the 300 page universal management system standard MSS1000  which he intensely focused on between 2011 and 2014. It was based on a set of mutually consistent unified management principles, concepts and definitions. MSS1000 had been demonstrated to be possible in his article ‘Order from Chaos’ published in the April 2011 edition of Quality World which explained a full scope boundless hierarchical management topic taxonomy. In essence, the taxonomy defined a logical place for everything that can potentially be needed in a management system, standard, regulation, license etc. and was informed by his quality and risk management consultancy experience and the creation of proven full scope boundless integrated management systems created with his clients.

Ian has published the following notable papers on various aspects of integrated management:

2000. Research into relationships and correlations between plant safety performance and occupational safety performance for British_Energy and BNFL Magnox in conjunction with DNV, 2000.
2001. Understanding and assessing safety culture, Society for Radiological Protection meeting, Saint Catherine’s College Oxford, 9 April 1997, published in the December 1997 Journal of Radiological Protection. Includes the ‘Dalling Model’ of organisational performance.
2002. The Future is Unified – a Model for Integrated Management, Quality World, April 2000.
2003. Integrated Management Definition, CQI Integrated Management SIG, 2002, reissued 2007.
2004. Eyes and Ears (integrated monitoring), Quality World, April 2004 – subsequently translated and published into Chinese and Japanese in the ‘Global Sources’ journal.
2005. Integrated Management System Definition and Structuring Guidance, CQI Integrated Management SIG, 2007.
2006. Order from Chaos (management topic taxonomy), Quality World, April 2011.
2007. Drafting of Universal Management System Standard MSS1000. 2011-2014.
2008. Management Integration: Benefits, Challenges and Solutions, International Institute of Risk and Safety Management (IIRSM) Technical Paper, March 2012.
2009. Managing Data in an Evolving World – A guide for good data governance, International Institute of Risk and Safety Management (IIRSM) Technical Paper, August 2016.
2010. Using MSS 1000 to Boost Performance, CQI Integrated Management, October 2016.