The importance of performance and measurement within the IAQG.

In today’s podcast episode, Eric DuBois, vice president of Safran Cabin, performance team lead with the IAQG, and contributor to the 9100 standard joins us to discuss the performance team and the importance of measurement. 

We are answering the tough questions – how do we (IAQG) hold ourselves accountable? How do we measure our performance and how do we continue to evolve?

Take a listen to this episode for the answers to these questions and so much more.

The IAQG is the International Aerospace Quality Group and sets the standard for quality within the worldwide supply chain within the aviation, space, and defense industry. IAQG currently maintains 26 active standards that establish common/shared tools and methods for quality improvement. To learn more, visit https://iaqg.org.  

Transcript

The Quality Horizon – Importance of performance and measurement  

[00:00:00]  

Susan: Greetings, everyone, and welcome. You are listening to the Quality Horizon, the official podcast of the IAQG. I'm Susan Matson, your host. Today, I am joined with Eric Dubois. Eric is the Quality Vice President of Safran Cabin. Additionally, he is also the Performance Team Lead, as well as a contributor to the 9100 Standard. 

Susan: Welcome, Eric.  

DuBois: Hello, Susan.  

Susan: Hello, and thank you for joining us today. So one of the things that we really wanted to talk about in depth is that performance team. What is the role that the performance team plays within the IAQG?  

DuBois: Our performance team is the team where we are looking to seek for data information to share [00:01:00] and see whether. The IAQG as a whole is delivering what is expected. Of course, it's a very young team creating stepping stone activity. We are not there yet. But of course, the IAQG is also a new organization. So we are experimenting. And let's say that for a time we were looking at where we were going, but now we know. And there is a full team around it, around me, which is working towards finding the right measurement, the right element in order to give feedback to the whole EAQG organization, whether it's a standard, whether it's the OPMT, to give them the feedback on what they are doing and asking them as customers, because they are all, whether they are from the different platform, they are all customers from us asking us to look and see to give a feedback on the IAQG performance. That is why it's called performance.  

Susan: Thank you. [00:02:00] So feedback, feedback is a very important part of this and it really is about the value bringing it to the industry. So it’s my understanding when you were in Brussels, not too long ago, is that the IAQG meeting week and the general assembly where that team started to form and begin to gel together and talk about that feedback. 

Susan: But they probably, and my guess is they've talked about some of the pain points. So what are the things that you are really looking for? That team is really looking for to understand and get a better understanding of that feedback. What are some of the pain points that you're looking at? 

DuBois: Really the three element would be first to give a data in order to see are we performing according to expectation on what we are doing today. That's the first part. And for that, we do a survey. The survey is another way because APIs are coming from the system and everything, but it's also an opportunity for people to speak [00:03:00] and ask questions differently and directly to the customers of the IAQG.  

DuBois: The second part is we are looking at the data. We have in IAQG now a lot of data gathered and we are funding a lot of expectations on OASIS because OASIS v3 will give us a lot of data to let people benchmark themselves around all the standards and all their situations and where they are and if they are performing according to it.  

DuBois: Last point is at the end also to give a cockpit. To have all the steps and to see if the IAQG as a growing organization is delivering exactly at the level they expect.  

Susan: Wonderful. So, the data that you're monitoring, and you talked about the survey, and you also talked about bringing data together. Couple things there that I wanted to dive, what is that survey that you're doing on an annual basis with the members? 

DuBois: Oh yes, the survey is a simple questionnaire that we are going through, [00:04:00] which is built with the different streams, and where we are asking, are you satisfied? What is your situation? And what do you expect next from the streams? So it's a simple questionnaire and actually we made it a little bit too complex and we are working to simplify it, more direct, less less complex in order to make, let everybody also express himself. 

Susan: So you did do this past year. Were there any aha moments? Were there any points where you said that's something we definitely need to take a closer look at?  

DuBois: There were some some very interesting feedback and The first point out of the survey shows that the 9145, the APQP is becoming the most popular standard from the IAQG. 

DuBois: But that's not the only thing. There is also something which is coming very strongly, which is remote situation and also the digitalization. We see that [00:05:00] today these two axes are really activities, which are becoming of use, and especially with the young generation.  

Susan: I definitely heard that and echoed and heard that when I was also in Brussels and even in a previous conversation that we had here on the podcast with Andy, the president of the IAQG, he talked about that digital transformation and all that data. 

Susan: He talked about how Oasis v3, as you said earlier, is going to provide all sorts of information that we're going to be able to provide even better feedback, even better understanding of the value that the IAQG can bring to the industry. What are some of the things that you're hoping to find with that data from OASIS? 

DuBois: What we hope to do is to give an image and a way forward and an opportunity to do leaderships of the company, which are inside the 9100 in order to know where they are. Very simple. The objective is to give them a benchmark [00:06:00] where they are at compared to the rest of the world. And all the leadership, all the people which are managing the companies, they are all the same. 

DuBois: They want to see, they want to understand, they want to react. And based on that, they want to decide and take action. And at the end of the day, what we want them to do is take action. Take action in the direction of the 9100. But nevertheless, this way, nobody will say anymore. That they are not completely conscious of the importance of the quality system in the organization and the standard and what it brings them in the business. 

Susan: How do you see that, especially with the ability to stay remote? I think, one of the things that we've learned with the pandemic and one of the things that we're seeing even in this last survey is how the view of the world in this hybrid approach and people being remote audits potentially being done in a remote environment. How does that all come into play? [00:07:00] 

DuBois: I think the message that most of the people deliver is to say, we want to do remote, but we want to have limits. We want to know where we are doing remote and where we should not do remote in order to hear that when we are using the remote, we are in a perfect added value activity and that using remote is not destroying something that is value added. So I think the people look at the limits and wants the limits to be written and identified.  

Susan: Agreed. And I would suspect, and if I'm not mistaken, Eric, when you joined the IAQG, that was at the beginning of the pandemic, correct?  

DuBois Ah, yes.: I'm a full remote guy at the IAQG at the beginning for more than a year and a half. And that may give me a different situation than any others, because I didn't show any of my colleagues for one and a half year. I worked out my resilience, and when I saw them, actually, [00:08:00] they were much different than what I was expecting.  

Susan: And with that ability to still work remote, and to still be able to collect the data and do great work, but you still, you saw first hand, obviously, through the IAQG, and I'm sure you're seeing it also within Safran, there's still that synergy that happens face to face in real time. And are you seeing that playing a role even still moving forward? How do you handle that hybrid approach?  

DuBois: We had no choice, first of all. And the second point is that we saw the limits of an hybrid approach. And I must say that I discovered the power of human to human speaking, discussing, winning together. 

DuBois: A human being, whoever he is done and is built to work together as a tribute. And needs to be together. We can help to continue the work together with digital. But first of all, [00:09:00] people needs to see each other eyes on eyes. And when that's done, the synergy is going to be much higher.  

Susan: Agreed. There is definitely a power that happens when you're in the room with someone. But going back, one of the things that I saw in the survey that you did, we spent a lot of time about changing some of the questions that you had. And one of the sections of that annual survey that you did with the member companies was to really dive in and talk about the SCMH. 

Susan: Which is the supply chain management handbook that the PSCI team provides to the industry, all the guidance materials and support materials for some of the standards. But you were asking the question about do other departments use that outside of quality? Why were you looking at that? What was the reasoning for that? 

DuBois: The objective was simple, simply to see that we have the standard, but we have today tools available with the [00:10:00] SCMH where we explain simply and efficiently the use of the standard. It's a very powerful tool for anybody to learn. And my question was are we keeping that only for the quality team or is it something that become obvious for, to the other department? 

DuBois: So we suspected that of course the quality, the supply chain, the program engineering and development departments we are going to be users. We were wondering if some other department support function like HR, finance, like might be interest and actually the were was highly focus on the department, which are in the value stream of developing, building, and creating a product from the first idea to the daily delivery to the customer, the department, which are more on the site where less interest for the moment. [00:11:00] 

DuBois: But I think it's a more a question of, they don't know it yet. So we have to invest on that. This tool is extremely powerful and based on this statement, we wrote an article that we sent out by saying, forgot Google, go to a SCMH because Google, you can't verify what you have. In the SCMH, everything is simple in your language into the air industry made for anybody to understand it, whether you are a specialist or a beginner, you find what you need, and it's simply explained. 

DuBois: So you really have the standard, which is helping you to be sure you are doing well, but also the way to use it. And that's extremely valuable for anybody who's going into it. And we saw that the standard which is popping out and where many people are going to are the 9145, [00:12:00] which is the APQP deployment, which seems to be the most popular and attractive one for everybody to understand what is inside. 

Susan: Yes, it is. I noticed on the SCMH side of things, that is just an extremely popular area. And it is almost like a best kept secret, so to speak, isn't it? But we don't want to keep it a secret anymore. And we do want to get that out there. What are your hopes, Eric? If you were to look at a crystal ball and kind of wave your hand over it a year from now, what are some of the things that you're hoping? That we can really begin to understand and enhance in terms of feedback and value that we can give to the industry, not even the industry, start with ourselves, start with our members, start with our suppliers, and then go to the industry. What are some of the things that we really are hoping to move the needle on? 

DuBois: My hope and my wish. And my energy is towards making sure that one day [00:13:00] we will stop having different standards everywhere. And then whether you are a customer and supplier relationship, all across the supply chain, wherever you speak to one to the other, we will use a standard document, which are the EAQG document, avoiding to rebuild, redo or reconstruct something which already existed. 

DuBois: And this way it will be life simple, whoever you talk to other to a customer, you have the same applicable rules and the same applicable activity to be done and whoever a customer is talking to you is asking you the same things. That's not only for, to us, it's also to our suppliers when we turn around and we do the same, we do the same to them. 

DuBois: So, it must become simple for everybody. For too long, everybody have been looking for having his own system. It's time to make it one unique system, which is applicable for all, which will simplify the life of the people so that [00:14:00] we can concentrate on one unique thing. The product, at the end of the day, the end customer, and that makes the plane fly higher, faster, less CO2, and that we invest time on the product and not anymore on the standard and the systems. 

Susan: I love it. I love it. That's where the value happens. That's, where the rubber meets the road almost. I have to ask one other question. What made you get into quality?  

DuBois: Ah, me it was a fantastic accident. I discovered that quality is the only place where there is the light, which is lighting up all the organization around. And it's like the place where you see everything in the company from a high level point. And also is the only place positive organization of a company. Because whatever you do, you're trying to improve, you're trying to transform, you're trying to make it better. [00:15:00]  Because I believe that quality, improvement, progress, all of that is exactly the same. 

DuBois: So it's the place where tomorrow, it's always better than yesterday. And finally, I think I went to quality for one reason, because of my capacity of being positive to anything. And many people are always saying, when we discover a problem, it's a problem. And me, I say, no, it's an opportunity. It's a moment where I can start working and start improving. So I think this job was perfectly dimension and built for me.  

Susan: Perfect opportunity to improve. I love it. Thank you very much. Eric was wonderful to talk to you today. Loved about how we learned more with regards to the performance team and the data and the information, the great things that are coming from the team to improve upon the industry at large. Thank you.  

DuBois: Thank you, Suzanne. And thanks for all these questions which are [00:16:00] driving us towards the next step. And please, guys, this is not the end of the day. This is the start of a story. Everything I said is just the beginning. In one or two years time, it will be totally obsolete looking at the future we have in the air industry. 

Susan: Moving forward. That's exactly what we're trying to do. Thank you, Eric. And thank you all for listening to the IAQG Quality Horizon. This is Susan Matson. Until next time, stay safe all. Thank you.