A Report on the

16th International Israel Society for Quality Conference

David Intercontinental Hotel

Tel Aviv, Israel

Nov. 14-16, 2006

by Scott Duncan

At the opening session of this conference, the Chair noted that there were 1900 registrants, 120 of whom were from 20 countries other than Israel. Besides myself, there were several US (attendees and) speakers such as ASQ President-Elect Michael D. Nichols, former ASQ Standards Committee Parliamentarian Rudy Kittlitz, and Judah Mogilensky, a long-time CMM/CMMI assessor and SEI SEPG Conference speaker. My specific presentation was a 6 hour seminar on agile methods on the last day. This was one of only two such seminars during the Conference. The other was a slightly shorter seminar on tools for quality, reliability, safety and security by Dr. Zigmund Bluvband, the Software Division’s International Regional Counselor. [Software was well-represented at the Conference but many of these sessions were only in Hebrew without translation. The translation issue was a bit of a problem as at least half the sessions were listed as in English (or with translation) and speakers had been asked to have slides in English in those sessions. Numerous times, this was not the case. This was my only real problem with the Conference.]

First Day, Tuesday, Nov. 14

Plenary Session

There were various speakers the first morning, mostly in English. However, the big surprise (as it was not announced before the Conference for security reasons) was an address, in Hebrew, by former Prime Minister Shimon Peres who also represented the Israeli government in presenting their national quality awards to the Israeli Aircraft Industries and, in the small “company” category, to ETA, a division of the Israeli Air Force.

Mr. Yair Ramati, Marketing Director for the former spoke, among other things, about the implication for design flaws in long product development cycles such as aircraft where such flaws may not always be reversible because of the length of time between insertion of the flaw and actual trial of the resulting product. Hence, identification and removal of the flaws early on (through effective design analysis) is important. [In my recent reading, analysis of design has been a key principle for engineering in other fields. In software, we tend to “test” design after the product is developed rather than analyze it before code is written. This is perhaps due both to a lack of knowledge/existence of design analysis tools as well as the ease in making changes to code compared to other engineered products.]

Following Mr. Ramati, a speaker for the Osem Nestle Company, Dan Propper, spoke about the nature of quality as a “non-negotiable” element and the “religious” nature of quality, i.e., if you do not truly believe in it, your result may be of technical merit, but not true quality. Propper also talked about quality having to “be in the DNA of the company” through top management’s personal practice of it. Compared to typical “safety-critical” industries, such as aircraft manufacturing, quality may be even more critical to the food industry globally since many people die every day around the world due to unsafe food. He also noted that you can be “the best in your own factory, but fail at the end of the day due to (global) suppliers. This was a reference to another Israeli company who was Israel’s number one manufacturer of baby food but, due to a supplier’s error, distributed a product batch, which killed 2 infants and injured 12 others for life. [A speaker for this company discussed the problem and their approach -- see later in this report.]

Project Management

This was presented in Hebrew (though the session was listed as in English), so I missed most of the content. One speaker, representing PMI Israel, had English slides (but on the Conference CD). He spoke about PMI’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) and its relationship to the CMMI’s management-related Process Areas. I was able to gather that the PMBoK has a 2-year revision cycle (which is just something I did not happen to know). The speaker also had slides which noted that while CMMI focuses on a larger organizational view of engineering projects, the PMBoK has a generic project-focus with no organizational layering, addressing project initiation and closure which the CMMI does not.

Risk management

Again, though listed in English this was also all in Hebrew but had English slides from which I gathered the following:

  • It is important to control the sources of risks since we may not be able to control the event(s) the risk causes or the effect(s) produced by the event(s).
  • On the other hand,” risk taking is the genesis of value creation.”
  • Four risk responses are (1) retention (absorption), i.e., acceptance, of the risk, (2) reduction, i.e., mitigation, of its impact, (3) transfer of the risk to someone else [who is perhaps better able to deal with the risk] and (4) avoidance of the risk altogether.

The speaker also noted the MUSING project ( on Business Intelligence, which the website describes as “the interactive process of analysing and exploring information to discern trends or patterns, thereby deriving insights and drawing conclusions”.

Second Day, Wednesday, Nov. 15

Plenary Session

Dr. Zigmund Bluvband moderated a panel of corporate officers from Israeli companies who each spoke and then were prompted by Dr. Bluvband to answer some questions. (The slides for the speakers were not on the CD, but there was translation available.)

The first speaker was Mr. Shraga Brosh (of the Manufacturers’ Association of Israel) who talked about quality in Israel as an opportunity in successful market globalization. With a small population, Israel’s internal market makes for limited growth potential, but globalization has opened that up dramatically. Though there have been industries and companies that have disappeared, many others have started and/or grown if they have been willing to change and innovate as well as improve production per worker. Israel cannot compete with low wage countries or those with many resources, but it can compete through time to market, innovation and quality. These factors are also what many low wage nations appreciate in their suppliers. However, his ultimate message was the “need to bring the message of quality outside this room” especially to small and medium-sized companies. In such companies the owner is of the senior manager and is involved in all aspects of product design, production, distribution, finance and marketing. Yet, while they may realize quality is important they cannot/do not devote the same attention to it on a day-by-day basis.

The second speaker was Mr. Shlomo Catran (of Philips Medical Systems Technologies, Israel) who spoke of his company’s growth from a small organization in CT Scanner R&D through successive ownership of the company by Picker International, then Marconi and, finally, Philips. He noted that a key quality element for them was developing personal excellence and turning it into company excellence. Early in the company’s existence, some flaws, being “adjusted for” by company installation technicians in the presence of the company’s Japanese client, resulted in the company being banned from doing business in Japan. When Philips bought them, because of the their reputation in Japan, they apologized to the companies that had questioned the quality. [The speaker briefly mentioned ISO 17799 on IT Security as one of several standards to which they adhere.]

The third speaker was a Mr. Zinn (of DSW, a Dead Sea potash manufacturer and the largest employer in the south of Israel) who described their work. The speaker pointed out that, compared to the other speakers, DSW had far lower quality risks. For them, quality problems in a batch might mean the need for the customer to fertilize a bit more or for DSW to spend a small amount to adjust the batches. DSW is also not sensitive to suppliers since they manufacture their own raw materials from the salt water and other chemicals around the Dead Sea. Their biggest concern from a national visibility perspective is environmental. There is some concern over sink hole creation at the north end of the Dead Sea. This environmental risk is something they pay attention to and take care of such that, in the south where they are, such problems are not an issue.

The final speaker as Mr. Yuval Levy (of New Remedia) who bought Remadia just after its near disappearance due to flaws in a batch of product from a supplier that killed 2 and permanently injured 12 Israeli infants. Before this, Remedia was the leading supplier of baby food in Israel. Levy bought the company during its crisis, removed many managers, and is not in the process of regaining market trust. He chose not to rename the company (other than to call it the New Remedia) to avoid the impression that the company was trying to “hide” its true identity and sell to the market under such a condition. The company now checks all batches themselves regardless of supplier checks (within or outside of Israel). Levy said he is part of all quality decisions and personally signs off on all product batches. [Zigmund noted that journalists will watch this company now for years.] Levy said that, when you have a loss of trust, you must make everything open and visible as well as explain everything, not hide behind lawyers and media consultants. Levy also noted a story about Tylenol’s poisoning problem which, though not the company’s fault, led to tamper-proof lids for medications.

Six Sigma

Mr. Michael D. Nichols (of Nichols Quality Associates and President-Elect of ASQ) spoke about many topics such as:

  • The differences between manufacturing and transactional (service) processes, e.g., difficulty in seeing defects from end to end in the latter and the general presence of discrete, rather than continuous, data in the latter.
  • The problems of moving a bad process (offshore) to a cheaper labor market just giving you a cheaper bad process and moving a defective process into a lean philosophy just giving you a defective process faster.
  • The need to get to where process improvement is part of people’s jobs, not some additional things they do, i.e., it becomes part of the company culture: “It’s how things are done around here.”
  • Need to address discrete (and largely non-normal) data in service processes with simple, not statistically complex, analysis.
  • The concept of Rolled Throughput Yield in which the quality %s throughout a process are multiplied to get the overall process quality.

Since this last point is an important Six Sigma concept, here is an example from the presentation using a person’s experience with a hotel stay where check-in is rated at 96%, room service is rated at 90%, the room itself is rated at 99% and check-out is rated at 92%. If one averaged these experiences, you’d get a process rating of about 94%. But Yield is determined by multiplying all individual experience ratings (i.e., .96 x .90 x .99 x .92) producing a Yield of 79%! Yield indicates the likelihood that an entire hotel experience would be defect-free.

CMMI

Mr. Kari Alho (a process consultant from Borland in Finland) spoke about software product delivery and software process improvement. Much discussion followed the presentation including comments from Judah Mogilensky and me about:

  • the role of developers in process improvement (I noted that Watts Humphrey started the Personal Software Process because he felt individual developers were not maturing with regard to their personal practices though they may be in CMM Level 4 or 5 organizations)
  • the unpleasant (but often necessary) removal of (management) “laggards” to move process change ahead
  • the paradox of demands for ROI data when it is not available and the lack of demand for it once (good) data is available (since the data “speaks for itself” at that point)
  • validation of SEI data (which some audience members felt seemed too good to be true)
  • the shift from detection to prevention costs (without immediately reducing overall Cost of Quality) at CMM/CMMI Level 3 and then the drop in overall CoQ as the move from Level 3 to 4 occurs (and thereafter)
  • where process improvement motivation comes from especially in in immature organizations where ROI-like data cannot be provided (the answer was that is usually comes from competitive/RFP pressure from clients and/or other “pain” points in the organization)

and

  • finally, directing people not to try to collect process improvement cost savings data but to collect data on the true costs of rework (which usually convinces people of a “pain” they have but may be hiding through unacknowledged/unpaid overtime or lumping into other estimation “padding”).

Knowledge Management

Dr. Ron Dvir (of Innovation Ecology – discussed the relationship between knowledge and quality management. This included discussion of what he called the “FutureCenter” and the “Knowledge Café” technique with details on Dvir’s website. [The Café approach has been used by ASQ for several of the leadership sessions.] Dvir also discussed how Knowledge Capital = market value - tangible assets (i.e., the value that “walks out the door every day at 5pm”).

Finally, he asked us to brainstorm about new ideas that could double the value of quality management to an organization’s bottom line within 5 years. Most of the people were not from software backgrounds (indeed I think only one was though others had software embedded in their products). I was somewhat astounded at the “new” ideas that surfaced which largely sounded like what Deming, Juran, Crosby and other early quality “pioneers” had said decades ago. I asked that, if these were “new” in people’s view, what had quality management been doing for the last 40-60 years? This prompted some talk about

  • the “bean counter” view of traditional quality,
  • what ASQ seemed to be telling members about the loss of quality-related jobs (which seems to be to look to non-manufacturing areas, like medicine, for more fertile ground to apply quality ideas),
  • how to generate trust in an organization (I suggested through “shared positive experience”),

and

  • (another suggestion of mine as to) the possible transforming nature of instituting an internal supply chain mentality where everyone is a customer of and a supplier to someone else in the product specification, development and delivery cycle (including the Customer).

Third Day, Tuesday, Nov. 16

Plenary Session

(The slides for the speakers were not on the CD, but there was translation available.)

Professor Avishai Braverman spoke about Quality, Leadership and Ethics from the perspective of Israeli society. This was an unusual talk: though the nature of the parallel translation may have contributed to some of the strange quality, most of the material seemed to be addressed, not surprisingly, to the state of Israeli society and government. Indeed, the address started with a question: why is there such a low productivity rate in Israel given the potential of the (young) population compared, for example, to Ireland or Singapore, which have advanced so much? Professor Braverman cited poverty, low education, (government) corruption and rising crime as issues to be faced, stating that “Israel needs and deserves better.” He stated that the quality of a nation is in its ethics, values and morals and pointed to the decline in the West compared to the world his generation [mine] grew up in.

While Professor Braverman noted that one must always assume responsibility for oneself, he asked what is there if there is no community, no society? A nation’s quality, he said, is about its future, not just its present, state. He then spoke on a few other topics:

Technology – There is “euphoria in the press,” regarding Israel’s potential, but there is the problem of sustainable growth. Israel does have many young people with much technical knowledge, but there needs to be more investment in R&D in Israel and not just startup companies. And Israel [the world?] still needs manufacturing as high-tech is just a small % of the economy (in Israel at least) at around 7%-10%. Professor Braverman mentioned what he called MOTech or “mind-oriented technology” which should include an upgrade to production technology as well.

Government – Israel is smaller than New Jersey (in land area) yet has a large number of government ministers which he feels needs to be reduced. Given the low turnout in elections, there would seem to be a low opinion/view of government’s potential to address what people need. He noted that the Hebrew word for “crisis” is also similar to [or the same as -- I was not sure of the translator’s meaning] that for “food” as the Chinese character for “crisis” is the same as “opportunity.”

Leadership – Professor Braverman said leadership is about serving the next, not mainly this, generation.

Professor Braverman was followed by Dr. Robert Kaarls of the Netherlands speaking on the role of Metrology. [In parallel to the quality conference there was the 3rd International Metrology Conference.] Dr. Kaarls said metrology was about something “once measured/tested” being “everywhere accepted.” That is, comparison to an accepted/understood standard. [As he spoke, I wondered whether people really understand the “standards” they use to make everyday decisions about what they do and accept?]