Presented by: Michele Wolf, USGS
Area of Focus: Masters and Session Level: Basic
We can’t expect a culture of quality to establish itself, the seeds must be planted, watered, grown, and cared for by all personnel within an organization. As W. Edwards Deming said, “Quality is everyone’s responsibility,” so how do we make sure a quality-centered culture takes root? That starts at the top with management planting the seeds and everyone in the organization taking responsibility for caring and growing the culture. In 2017, the US Geological Survey (USGS) began implementing a mission-wide Quality Management System (QMS) in Energy and Minerals Mission Area (EMMA) laboratories. Over the past 4 years, establishing a new QMS has been challenging. Implementing such a large-scale change while concurrently establishing a newly defined quality-centered culture was a high-risk objective. In this presentation, we look at the role our leadership has played in creating a quality-centered culture, providing concrete examples of what worked and what didn’t work.
