Research pick: Quality after the pandemic - "Quality insight: product quality certification post COVID-19 using systems framework from academic program accreditation"

Adedeji Badiru of the Air Force Institute of Technology in Dayton, Ohio, USA, discusses the notion of quality insight in the International Journal of Quality Engineering and Technology and how this relates to motivating researchers and developers working on quality certification programs after the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the realm of product quality, we depend on certification based on generally accepted standards to ensure high quality. Badiru writes that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led to serious disruption to production facilities and led to the upending of normal quality engineering and technology programs. In the aftermath of the pandemic, there will be a pressing need to redress this problem and its impact on quality management processes may, as with many other areas of normal life, continue to be felt for a long time.

Badiru suggests that now is the time to develop new approaches to ensure that we retrieve the pre-COVID quality levels. He suggests that in the area of quality certification, we must look at other methods in this field, perhaps borrowing from other areas of quality oversight. One mature area from which the new-normal of certification might borrow is academic accreditation.

The work environment has changed beyond recognition through the pandemic and we are unlikely to revert to old approaches entirely. Indeed, the pandemic has already necessitated the urgent application of existing quantitative and qualitative tools and techniques to other areas, such as work design, workforce development, and the form of the curriculum in education. Action now, from the systems perspective in engineering and technology, “will get a company properly prepared for the quality certification of the future, post-COVID-19 pandemic,” he writes. This will allow research and development of new products to satisfy the triage of cost, time, and quality requirements as we ultimately emerge from the pandemic.

Badiru, A. (2021) ‘Quality insight: product quality certification post COVID-19 using systems framework from academic program accreditation’, Int. J. Quality Engineering and Technology, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp.218–227.