Theme and Focus Areas

Theme: Expanding the Reach of Quality

The world is ever-changing, but quality's ability to have a positive impact on the world is constant. The range and scope of how and where quality can be applied is constantly growing, and it's spreading into more and more aspects of our work and our lives. The fundamentals of quality haven't changed much over the years, but our openness and awareness of where and how quality tools, techniques, and philosophies can be applied has.

Focus Areas

Social Responsibility

Social responsibility is an emerging topic, and (more and more) the links between quality and being socially responsible are being uncovered, clarified, and realized. This focus area of the conference is designed to look at how the culture of quality aligns with social responsibility. It is also designed to share examples of how both can be used to serve customers, communities, and organizations. This analysis examines topics and issues such as:

New Applications of Proven Quality Tools

The quality tools, techniques, and philosophies at our disposal are numerous, but greater still are the areas for which they can be applied. This focus area of the conference is designed to celebrate the scope of quality by demonstrating how the application of quality principles can go beyond the "traditional uses" of the past. Issues covered in this track include:

Quality in a Global Economy

Globalization is connecting the economies of different countries more and more. These connections bring new opportunities, but can also involve new challenges. The purpose of this track is to demonstrate how quality can be utilized to address the challenges of the 21st Century global economy. The analysis done in this focus area covers issues such as:

Making the Case for Quality

It can be tempting and often easy to forgo the long-term value of sound quality practices for the immediacy of short-term solutions that are quick, but don't last. Business fads, downsizing, and budget constraints are just a few examples of the forces that can tempt organization to abandoned their focus on quality and become more reactive than proactive. Advocating the initiation or continuation of quality practice can be difficult, but it is a critical component of keeping a quality culture vibrant in the organizations we belong to and the world we live in. This focus area of the conference explores this reality by touching on issues such as:

Quality Basics

Understanding the basic rules, tools and fundamentals of quality are key to its efficacy. This focus area explores quality's primary elements through the following topics.