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Looking Toward the Future
In the January issue of News for a
Change, Ken Case, president-elect of ASQ, began
a multipart report on the Futures Study that was
conducted during the summer of 2002. He shared the
seven key forces that are most likely to affect
quality in the foreseeable future. In January, he
presented the first of four scenarios that project
how society may look in the not-too-distant future.
This month, he’ll share the second
scenario.
Last month, I explained that we create these
scenarios, hoping to stimulate quality
professionals’ thinking. By deeply considering
each scenario, we can plan ways to help it come to
fruition or to prevent its occurrence. Each of these
scenarios is plausible; what we do collectively as we
move toward the future will determine what portions
of these scenarios become
reality.
The first scenario was the one that the futures
team considered most likely to occur. It’s
called, “The Fruits of Knowledge,” and
assumes that the fundamental elements of quality
management have become instrumental in realizing the
benefits promised by technology advancements and the
dissemination of knowledge.
In this month’s scenario, “Back to the
Past,” the situation is quite discouraging. A
vicious cycle of economic and environmental
disruption, ineffective leadership, and social
fragmentation has occurred. The quality profession
has dwindled to near-extinction as a result of
disenchantment with its outcomes, institutional cost
reductions, and the profession’s failure to
grasp the seriousness of the situation and respond
proactively.
I’m sure you’ll find this worst-case
scenario discouraging, and you may be inclined to
dismiss it as too gloomy. I encourage you, however,
to consider whether the actions you’re taking
today are helping to ensure our future doesn’t
look like this one.
Economic Hardship
- The effects of the 2009 stock market crash are
still being felt, long after millions of investors
went bankrupt and the nation experienced wave upon
wave of layoffs.
- Inequities between the wealthy few and the
desperate masses led to breakdowns in social
cooperation and communication.
- Economic hardship in developing nations
unleashed a backlash against globalization and
Western influence. The gulf and acrimony between
the “haves” and “have nots”
of the world’s nations have
intensified.
Public Health
- Biotechnology research and development is out
of control.
- Corporations ignore ethical and quality
concerns in pursuit of profits. Lethal microbes
have fallen into the hands of terrorist groups, who
have obtained the power of the Mafia in the early
1920s United States.
- Depression is the world’s most prevalent
health concern, followed closely by poverty and
hunger.
- Around the globe, social safety nets have
ruptured, leaving millions of people facing poverty
and illness.
- Disease and death have escalated because of
errors within patient care systems.
Environment
- Ecological disasters have piled up. In the
United States, after funding cuts forced the
Environmental Protection Agency to curtail
enforcement, companies have begun ignoring
quality-based regulations.
- Nuclear waste has contaminated water supplies
because quality standards for its storage have not
been met.
- Ozone depletion has resumed as a result of
careless disposal of
chlorofluorocarbons.
- Terrorists have exploited these weaknesses,
unleashing biowarfare strikes.
The Quality Professional
- The quality community’s absence in the
development of the knowledge economy—coupled
with resistance to change among a core of quality
professionals—kept the profession out of
debates that framed the concepts of knowledge
management.
- The profession, therefore, lost its influence
on society’s economic efforts for the
future.
- Ongoing recession has been prolonged, in part,
by the failure to apply quality methods to
financial institutions and other elements of the
global economic infrastructure.
- ASQ/AQP membership has shrunk in
half, forcing the demise of The Journal for Quality
and Participation, Quality Progress, and other
ASQ/AQP magazines and many other
programs.
Quality’s Lost
Opportunities
- Quality professionals could have encouraged
governments to develop better processes for
oversight and management of technology.
- They could have revived conversations about the
sustainability of business methods and opened
debates on how to measure quality of
life.
- Quality methods could have been used to
identify and eliminate the root causes of criminal
activity.
 KEN CASE is regents professor
of industrial engineering and management at Oklahoma
State University, where he also serves as executive
director of the master of science in engineering and
technology management program. He has doctorate and
master’s degrees in industrial engineering, and
a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering
from Oklahoma State University. Case is currently
ASQ’s president-elect and has served as board
treasurer, national director, editorial board member,
and Tulsa Section chair. An ASQ-certified quality
engineer, reliability engineer, quality auditor, and
quality manager, Case was named outstanding engineer
in Oklahoma in 1987. He is a past president of the
Institute of Industrial Engineers, a member of the
National Academy of Engineering, a Baldrige Judge
(1991-93), and an academician in the International
Academy for Quality.
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