Blog

Redefining Quality for the London Underground

Background Last year provided an Interim Head of Quality for London Underground’s Capital Programmes Directorate (LU CPD).  The introduction to that project started when LU CPD engaged us to investigate the potential development of a ‘formal quality system.’ The purpose of the work was to improve project and programme delivery performance, specifically reviewing processes, systems…

Redefining Research Quality for this century

The landscape for research quality professionals is dramatically changing. Therefore Oakland Consulting is writing a series of six articles for the Research Quality Association (RQA, http://www.therqa.com). The RQA is the professional membership body providing status and visibility for individuals engaged in the quality of research concerning pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, chemicals and medical devices. These industry sectors face continuous…

Network Rail: a journey of digital transformation

Network Rail is involved in some of the most ambitious and diverse ventures in Great Britain – A transformation in anybody’s book. Richard Corderoy, CQP MCQI, explains in the attached Quality World Article how the Oakland Institute helped support the Infrastructure Projects Business Group (IP) to address governance, assurance and improvement. The group’s governance is now aligned to the core…

Reducing cost and protecting reputation

Whether you are a sales director who is fed up with dealing with excess volumes of customer complaints, a quality director struggling to fix the sources of failure or the finance director counting the cost, serial failure of manufactured products when installed in the field is a costly business. The costs of external failure (once…

Are your products reliable? – Three questions every CEO should get answered

Have you experienced product failures? In recent months we have seen several companies featured in the news because of product failures in the market place. This is often followed by reporting of poor financial results and/or tumbling share prices.  Warranty claims are a nightmare for many companies, the more so with social media highlighting and…

The Oakland Institute for Business Research and Education launches

At the CQI Annual Conference on 13th April 2016 we showcased the launch of our research and education division, The Oakland Institute for Business Research and Education. The Institute was founded by our Chairman, Professor John Oakland in 2015 in the 30th year of Oakland. It continues the work of the highly respected European Centre…

Practices for the Fact-Based Thinker

Basing your decisions on data alone just isn’t good enough We live in an age of great upheaval.  Leaders are required to make decisions under extreme uncertainty and change.  Solutions to problems have become more complex and must be found quicker with a greater array of stakeholders to involve and persuade.  If quality professionals are…

Prevent warranty claims in your business

In recent months we have seen several companies featured in the news because of product failures in the market place. This is often followed by reporting of poor financial results and/or tumbling share prices.  Sometimes it is exacerbated by the company having to set aside large sums to cover legal claims concerned with their products….

How to improve quality culture

Rob Oakland, Partner at Oakland Consulting, reveals his advice for raising the profile of quality in your organisation with the CQI, in their latest Knowledge e-newsletter. My role at Oakland Consulting is to help organisations reach the highest level of performance. This is done by working with people to improve quality, reduce the costs of…

Big data. What does it all mean?

In today’s world, data and information have become the lifeblood of most organisations. System generated data, people generated data, structured data, unstructured data…it’s what we use to make decisions, build processes, deliver change, and spot risks. However, if that data is unstructured, unprotected and of poor quality, how do we know those decisions are correct?…

Data Quality – Let the Battle Commence!

The battle for the control of data has begun and as organisations figure out what to do with all the data moving around inside and outside the company boundaries, is it quality or quantity that you should care about? This can depend on a number of factors, but we believe a key aspect is recognising…

Poor data quality damages reputations

The Problem Data is like money, if you keep it under the mattress it won’t increase in value, but if you use and invest it wisely it will pay dividends. Data is a key asset of any business, but only if it is used to create information, that can be turned into knowledge. Data Quality…