QuEST Forum Takes On Sustainability At EMEA 2014

Mid-year we always provide an update on QuEST Forum conferences and current TL 9000 initiatives.  In late June, BIZPHYX executives attended the QuEST Forum EMEA Regional Conference in Vienna, Austria.  This is QuEST Forum’s annual conference covering activities in the Europe, the Middle East and Africa.  This year’s EMEA conference really highlighted the Executive Board’s focus on Sustainability.  Who isn’t focusing on CSR and Sustainability, right?  Well, EMEA telecoms are no different.  Steve Pickett, Chair of the QuEST Forum Executive Board and CEO of WesTower Communications, presented about the Board’s news sustainability objectives and how they will impact the TL 9000 standard going forward.  QuEST Forum recently included several sustainability requirements in TL 9000, including a requirement for organizations to define product disposal as part of its product lifecycle.

John Spears, Director at epi Consulting in Gloucester, United Kingdom gave a very compelling presentation entitled: “Sustainability – What, Why & How, the Proposed QuEST Forum Approach to Sustainability.”  John specializes in supply chain strategy, sustainability, energy efficiency and circular economy in the EU.  He works with ICT suppliers and service providers such as Vodafone, Ericsson, Huawei, ZTE, Samsung, Saudi Telecom, Energis and Scottish Power.  He and Wes made the case for a set of global initiatives in ICT sustainability.

So stay tuned for future updates to the standard.  This corporate reality is not going away and that’s why we are becoming more involved in helping clients certify to complimentary standards in electronics recycling, like R2.  More to come on that subject in a future article and upcoming podcast.

As always, these conferences provide excellent presentations on the value of the TL 9000 standard and ICT quality practices in general.  A stand out presentation was provided Nokia Networks’ Dr. Sunita Chauhan and Soma Sarkar who presented their paper on Nokia’s software quality defect detection model.

Together, they described Nokia Networks’ approach to eliminating defects early in the software development process.  This model has significantly improved Nokia’s ability to prevent defects, contain and detect them early, and correct them faster.  In turn, this has resulted in virtually zero known defects in their end product for customer pilot projects.  They achieved this without compromising delivery schedules.  In fact, Nokia Networks has decreased open customer defects in its software by more than 60% since 2011 and cut network outages by a third since 2012.  That’s serious business.  Nokia recorded this presentation and you can watch it here:

 

 

So for now, outside of the updates that will likely occur to the TL 9000 standard as the result of the impending ISO 9001:2015 revision, keep two concepts in mind– Small Business/Technology Start-Ups and Sustainability.  These will be the likely drivers of future organizational goals within QuEST Forum and for the TL 9000 quality standard.  Now, we begin preparing for the Americas Best Practices Conference which, will be held in Clearwater, Florida in September!