What Does “Made In…” Mean To You?

This is a guest post by Laurel Nelson-Rowe, ASQ managing director.

ASQ was among the invitation-only participants at a conference this month in Shenzhen, China, that carried an imposing title: “Huawei Big Quality International Seminar.” The brainchild of Victor Li, vice president, quality and operations, for the multinational telecommunications company, the event had lofty goals. It called together quality experts from a number of nations (China, Germany, Japan, the U.K, and the U.S.) and industries (including academia and business) to help define, map the implications, and create the call-to-action of “Big Quality” for the company and for the universal quality community.

In opening what he called a “milestone meeting,” Li said he hoped the sessions—attended by 50+ Huawei leaders as well as his invited guests—would help “build the foundation of Big Quality” and prompt Huawei thinking, planning, and action in areas such as its culture of quality, management systems, and the capabilities of its people, now and in the future. Li said he envisions an “architecture for Big Quality that will be for the globe, not just one enterprise, not just one supplier, not just one country…Big Quality and Big Quality Management Systems will be systems and services delivered through, accessed in the cloud.”

Li and Huawei are not alone in challenging the industry—and ASQ—to change, to rapidly move the tools, techniques, management, and systems ahead, and to develop new approaches and innovate in the era of big data, Internet of Things, industry 4.0 and cloud computing. In a series of country-specific reports, each speaker described the country’s quality root structure, how far the profession, practice, and the industry have come in their native lands, and the barriers and opportunities facing quality, management systems, business, and economies in the fast-change, technology-infused, big-data driven global economy.

I joined ASQ China General Manager Fred Zhang for a panel discussion where the common ground philosophies and the diverse characteristics of countries and of quality surfaced. We were asked to describe what “Made in ____” (fill in your homeland) means.

I’ve captured some of the words and themes (with input from seminar organizers Jack Pompeo, Huawei director for quality and customer advocacy and ASQ fellow, and  Nigel Croft of TCA Global Ltd, one of the leading authorities on the forthcoming ISO 9001: 2015 standard,):

Assurance
Attention to Detail
Brand Image
Competition
Confidence
Customer-Driven
Design
Efficiency
Ethical
Emotion
Feeling
Genuine
Get-It-Right-The-First-Time
Ingenuity
Innovation
Patriotism
Persistence
Pride
Precision
Process-Driven
Standard
Sustainability
Teamwork
Trust

Perhaps you can match the word or theme to the country for a little mental exercise. Multiple answers per country allowed.

But more importantly, how would you fill in that phrase—“Made in ___”—for your country, your culture, your quality? Did it mean something else yesterday? Do you want it to mean something else tomorrow?

To prep for the Huawei event, I posted a prompt on my LinkedIn profile, asking for answers to what “Made in the USA” means today. Lots of views, not too many takers. Now that I’ve added Big Quality, Big Data, China, Japan, Germany, and some voices, let the games begin.

from A View from the Q http://asq.org/blog/2015/08/what-does-%e2%80%9cmade-in%e2%80%a6%e2%80%9d-mean-to-you/
from American Quality Management http://aqmauditing2014.tumblr.com/post/127482129820