A love for our furry friends is shared among Pro QC teams across the globe. In fact, international trends are consistent.” World pet markets are growing at a dramatic rate, with a number of countries witnessing higher than ever pet ownership and spending.”

Euromonitor reports that the world pet market arena in India is expected to grow at a 10-15% annual rate in the coming years and is projected to eventually become a leading supplier of pet products around the world. Brazil has one of the largest pet populations in the world, with a sales increase of 12-17% each year. Within the U.S., the American Pet Products Association (APPA) offers a look at the pet industry expenditures from 1994 to 2016. The growth of the spending on the pet industry has been referred to as quite staggering. In fact, even in years in which the economy dipped into recession, Americans made their pets a priority and spending steadily increased. In 1994, the APPA says Americans spent $17 billion on their pets. By 2016, spending nearly quadrupled to an estimated $62.75 billion. By 2020, the pet industry could hit $96 billion in sales.

This month represents six years of blogging and sharing quality news and insight. Pro QC has provided QC services for over three decades and has seen the emergence of technology within the industry and the significant advantages organizations have today as a result.

A few notable advances in technology we’ve seen over the years includes:

1984: When Pro QC started in 1984, scheduling requests were primarily handled by fax and were hand written.  During that time, the cost of international long distance prohibited frequent team communications among regions. Communications were slow, and calls were short.

Wichita’s NPR station recently focused an OnWords piece related to quality.

Consider the following:

“You can usually tell that an organization has stopped caring about quality when it becomes the only thing they talk about.”

As quality professionals, we revel in the fact that organizations might be talking too much about quality. In that scenario, we have won and finally impressed the message that quality is indeed everyone’s responsibility.

And, is there really such a thing as too much data? Of course we know there is, but most quality engineers are going to revert to Deming:

“In god we trust, all others bring data.” 

The last comment in this piece is compelling though:

“So if it seems like a quality improvement plan has pulled all the passion out of your product, perhaps you should go back and ask what quality means for the product you sell.”

This is noted as consistent with the Plan > Do > Check < Act (PDCA) cycle and sums up the nature of continuous improvement nicely.

“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement and success have no meaning.” ~Benjamin Franklin

Some of our inquiries at Pro QC come from organizations reaching out for reactive assistance that addresses current, significant quality issues. Once the immediate issue is addressed, ongoing quality efforts lose their luster until the next debacle.  It can be a viscous cycle in which clients are faced with difficult decisions regarding accountability to stakeholders.  Reactive solutions are also often more costly.

But, quality is a journey.

It’s a journey.

Here are a few lessons learned as an organization offering over three decades of experience in the industry:

1. A successful journey starts and ends with the right leadership.  The organization’s leadership must support quality and ongoing efforts for improvements. And, that support must be communicated from the top, down in order for everyone to understand the importance of quality as a factor in decision making.