Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
What if one of the most valuable tools for improving performance at a green facility isn’t a new piece of equipment or the latest technology, but a better way of making decisions? Everyday green professionals make decisions that affect product quality, operational efficiency, safety, and customer confidence. But how do we make sure those decisions are informed, consistent, and supported by the right information? That’s where quality management systems comes into play. Let’s get started. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Whole Grain Podcast. I’m your host, Jim Lenz, Director of Global Education and Training at GEAPS, the Grain Elevator and Processing Society. At GEAPS, we make our mission to champion, connect, and serve the global grain industry and our members. And through this podcast, we bring your conversations with industry experts, educators, and thought leaders who share insights and practical ideas to help move our industry forward. Today we’re excited how quality management systems or QMS can go far beyond compliance and documentation to help grain facilities improve their operations and make better decisions. Joining me is Dr. Gretchen Mosher, professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at Iowa State University. Gretchen has also played an important role in the development of Jeeps’ new online course focused on quality management systems for bulk materials handling operations. We’ll discuss what an effective quality management system really looks like, how facilities can turn data into meaningful action, and how emerging technologies may influence the future of quality management. Today we’re talking about quality management systems and what they can do for the decisions people make every day at a great facility. Dr. Gretchen Mosher is joining us today, and that is terrific of it because she is going to take things and make it very practical. Thank you, Dr. Mosher, for joining us. Welcome.
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
I’m glad to be here. Thank you,
Redefining What A QMS Is
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
Speaker 3
Jim.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
People are wondering what is a quality management system and what do people usually picture when they hear that phrase, quality management systems, and what should they picture instead?
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
I think many people probably think about a very regimented, objective-driven, fairly inflexible system that is kind of a top-heavy, you know, this is something pushed down on us from the administration and the management, and that they want us to do these things in a certain way. That is generally not what the more contemporary version, and I would argue, even going way back to W. Edwards Deming, who is considered the godfather of this field, I don’t think that is what he ever imagined as well, right? It is a little bit political to try and take over his messaging, as it would be, you know, when you’re talking the Constitution or the Bible or whatever. But ultimately, I don’t think that he was into a regimented routine where it’s an inflexible outline of objectives that you’re completing. I don’t think that’s how you get the best out of a quality management system. I think a good quality management system reflects the processes that are embedded within it and those processes that create systems and those systems that create organizations, and that they all kind of, I feel like I’m kind of around the campfire singing kumbaya, right? But it is really a matter of everything flows together. There’s a place for everything, and that by everything I mean every process, every action. People know what to do and they do it consistently, and then they measure it consistently to demonstrate that it is providing what you need it to in terms of information, in terms of analytics, in terms of decision-making tools, and so on. And so it is just kind of about fitting all the pieces together, in my opinion. And so that’s often the what people think. I think it is much more flexible and specific to individual cases, or it certainly can be. It is really you use that structure for the for kind of guidance, but you’re not limited by that structure. You in fact will make a stronger system, in my opinion, if you take the individual components that are unique to a given process, and then it really forces you to assess and prioritize the processes that you keep, those that you revise, and those that you discard, right? It really helps you to think about how important is it that we continue to do this when it takes a lot of time and energy and resources. How important is it to the larger system and organization?
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
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Dr. Gretchen Mosher
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Documentation Plus Continuous Improvement
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
What do you think about when people talk, oh, maybe just documentation? It’s really more than that, isn’t it?
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
It is more than that. I think documentation is certainly part of that system. And it’s difficult to replicate actions and protocols if you don’t have documentation. And as the saying goes, if it wasn’t documented, it wasn’t done, right? That is not entirely false. It is, but to see it only as documentation is quite short-sighted, in my opinion, because it is the documentation that provides the structure and the guidance. But without learning from that documentation and without that continuous improvement aspect of the documentation, what’s the most valuable thing out of that documentation? And are we going to continue with it or are we going to make it better? The continuous improvement is where I see the real value in quality management systems, is that continuous examination of is what we’re doing working effectively? And not just is it working effectively, but are we hitting it out of the park with this thing, right? Are we really touching those things that we need to be hitting to make this a functional uh corporation or functional organization? That’s quality management systems at their best.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
I like it. Thank you for sharing that. I mean, how have customer expectations, food safety, traceability, workforce changes, and technology changed the importance of QMS for grain facilities today?
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
All of those things have had some influence, and I would also say provide even more support for the use of a more structured approach. I think the days of saying we know this because it’s in somebody’s brain, right? There’s only one person in this organization that knows how to do this task, and they’re out today. So you’re gonna have to wait till tomorrow to get this thing done, right? I think those days I know are still typical for small organizations, but I think a very focused and smart move for even a small organization is to cross-train employees so that people know what to do, people do the things that they know to do, and then they see the output that results, and they use those data to make decisions that benefit the organization. It’s it is a very circular process where you find the problem, you collect the data, you make the fix, you test the fix, and then you just keep rolling around, right? Just that plan, do, check, act framework that was developed by W. Edwards Deming is very core to most quality management systems. And that is that continuous improvement aspect. And all of the things that you mentioned traceability, customer requirements, food safety all require continuous problem solving, continuous troubleshooting, continuous figuring out what happened here and why didn’t this work like we expected it to. Those types of questions come up again. And I think even in workforce development and workforce challenges, I think quality management systems can help your system run more efficiently and effectively because the people you employ are well trained and know what they are doing, and they do the things that they are slated and required tasks to do consistently. And that is an important part. Employees are always an important part of a quality management system. And so hiring people who buy into that system is an important part of success, I think a very definite success factor in quality management.
Turning Quality Into Operational Advantage
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
Huge success factor. You’ve described quality as more than a requirement. How can it be an operational advantage?
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
I think the goal with quality management is to move away from the band-aid approach or the kind of running around like a chicken with our heads cut off approach to problem solving, saying, Oh, here’s a squeaky wheel. I better go fix that squeaky wheel, but I don’t have time to improve the whole wheel because I’m fixing the squeaky part, right? It is very much this idea of trying to predict and take care of things, manage the risks that we have before they become large and catastrophic. And I’ve had a lot of conversations so far this fall with producers and grain handlers about checking grain bins. Checking the check itself and the documentation that goes with that doesn’t actually alone fix the problem of grain quality in a bin, right? In a storage bin. It is the use of that data to make decisions that really gives it its power. So it’s not a matter of just doing the things, it’s a matter of taking what we know and improving our processes so that we can outcompete the organization down the road. We do these things better because we understand our process better. And really, all organizations are limited by their weakest process. Their weakest link, if you will, is really the best they can ever do. And quality management helps to elevate all of the processes, bringing that weakest link so that it isn’t quite as damaging to the organization and doesn’t bring the whole organization down to a fairly low level of performance outcomes. You want that performance level to be higher, and quality management systems help us do that because we have the information we need to make better decisions.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
Yeah, I mean, you’ve described it beautifully, uh how it is such an operational advantage.
Why Facilities Struggle With Data
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
Grain facilities collect tremendous amounts of information. Why do many organizations struggle to use it effectively?
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
Well, I I have a lot to say on this, as you probably imagine. But the primary reason is because that’s the difficult part, right? It’s easy to collect the data. It is much more difficult to think about it and analyze it and interpret it and potentially make changes to your operations because of that data. Humans generally like things as they always have been. Most humans, even if they claim to like change, they often don’t like change for them. They’re thinking about change for others, right? Often, not always. But generally, we don’t like as humans to make changes. And the data and information that are collected as part of quality management systems often are difficult. You know, you have to sort through, and and this is an area that sometimes AI can be helpful. I was just reading an article before I came on this call where someone had said somebody’s question about using artificial intelligence to replace experience was troubling to them because they feel like they want the model of the lived experience, but they don’t want to actually have the lived experience. And I think that’s an excellent point. Using the experience that your employees bring to the processes that they deal with on a daily basis and getting them to think about them more objectively, not so much like this is my process, this is my area, but how might it look if I wasn’t there? Like, would someone else know how to do this? And I think that is a really challenging thing to think through. And so my first comment on that is that that’s why it is so difficult. It’s tough, it’s challenging. But I also think the second piece is that organizations also don’t really love change. Customers don’t like changes, a different system, a different measurement tool, a you know, a different way of uh thinking about the standards that are going to be applied, the rates and the you know, the shrink rates or the moisture discount uh schedules and things like that that potentially could bring additional revenue and a smoother process, but are just being held back because people don’t want to make the changes. Those are difficult conversations to have. And many of these changes often involve some difficult conversations. People tend to avoid those types of conversations. So I think that is another reason why it is difficult to make the changes. But I think that’s really that second phase of quality management. The first phase is the documentation, the understanding of the concepts and the processes. But the second phase is making decisions, strategic decisions intended to move the organization forward using that data that you have collected and the information and your experiences. And I think that is one of the benefits of having an experienced workforce is that they know things that you probably don’t if you’re the one managing the process. So being able to combine the data and the lived experience and the process information is really a powerful trifecta of information to help make that process a little bit easier so that it can be reflective of both what is actually happening and versus what we think is happening.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
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Dr. Gretchen Mosher
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Separating Signal From Noise
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
So big change can be challenging. There’s a lot of data that information can get stuck somewhere, it can get overlooked. How do you tell the difference between useful data and noise? Can you share an example of where paying attention to the data help prevent a larger problem?
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
The noise that we often see in the data sometimes will come from situations that are abnormal, but we don’t always recognize. And so when we think about common cause, common variation that is inherent to our processes versus special cause variation, things that happen rarely or unusually, um, assignable causes are often the reason for that. Things that have happened that we can directly line that back to say, yep, that’s the reason. That’s the causal factor for what happened here. But I think when you begin to start thinking about the inherent variation, there you’re never going to have a system where you don’t have variability. So misclassifying your common cause variation as special cause and then chasing variation down into a rabbit hole to try and shrink something to a level that it’s not ever going to get to, I think is one example of how you can kind of be distracted by that noise that may not actually be noise. Sometimes, and often, I would say often, that noise is exactly that. It is a kind of a one-off type of situation. And then you may classify it rather than classifying it as special cause, as it should be. You’re classifying it as a common cause variation and chasing down the reason to and seek to eliminate it. And sometimes it’s like chasing a rabbit. It just it never doesn’t, it doesn’t seem to make any difference because there was never really a problem to begin with. And I think that is the risk when you chase noise rather than true causal factors. How do you tell the difference? I think that’s where the experience with the processes comes into play. Uh, it is difficult and it does take some lived experience and knowledge of what should be happening versus what is happening to understand whether something is a noisy piece of data or just typical variation in a process that is functioning within the expected protocols and parameters. So it I wish I could give you a checklist to say, well, here’s here are some things you should look for. Unfortunately, recognizing noise and and I would say noise sometimes is what we would call a symptom rather than a causal factor. Symptoms are easy to find, but they often, when you fix them, they don’t solve the problem. So that’s one indication that you’re chasing after noisy data or symptom data rather than what is actually happening and to cause that.
Consistency Starts With Process Clarity
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
Suppose the facility wants to get better at that. What needs to be in place or the information leads to consistent action. In that course, you use the word consistent a lot. Tell us more about that.
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
I think you ask what should the first step be? I think it is to really get a handle on what those processes are and what they look like, how long they take, how many people it takes to complete them, what is their yield, right? How often do they perform within the parameters that you have set for them? What are the parameters that you’ve set for them and where did those come from? Things like that. So if you think about it, for example, if you took a flight on your ticket or when you book that flight, often it’ll say the yield of how often the flight is late or how often they frame it as how often it is on time, right? I am much less likely, if I have any ability to choose, to take a flight that says it’s on time 85% of the time rather than one that says it’s on time 25% of the time, right? What is helpful to know about your process is how often they are meeting and working within those parameters. When they are doing that, it is a lot easier to see the noise, right? And Things that can be corrected versus things that are one off or are out of the control. And things that are out of control of the operators and the systems that you are operating within often can be mismanaged. Or in some cases, it’s a good reason to use another vendor, right? If it’s something that you can’t control, that gives you the leverage potentially to take it out and replace it with something that works better. So those are some things. I fear I have gotten a little off track here, but that’s how a couple of areas where people might work on improving their skills in assessing noise and noisy data versus things that are actually going to be useful as causal factors.
Policy SOPs Work Instructions Records
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
What’s great about that, Chiefs quality management systems course is uh it not only walks the learner through the building blocks of an ecosystem, and we’re talking about policy, standard operating procedures, work instructions, forms, and records, but they become very engaged. They actually look at sample ones, they write that, they put a response, you get feedback. So it’s really an engaging, high-level of very learner-centric. Can you go through those things and what role each plays? So we’re talking about again policy, standard operating procedure, work instructions, forms, and records.
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
Yes. So the to begin with, the quality policy is a broader, um, wider, more umbrella view that says this is what we’re planning. This is these are our goals for our quality management system. And this is kind of our grounding philosophy on what we do in this organization about quality. From there, you think about the processes that make up each system within the corporation or the company, and you develop a standardized standard operating procedure or SOP for each of those processes. From there, you move into the work instructions. So standard operating procedures are written more from a measurement perspective, I would say. They’re written so that you know kind of what you’re measuring out of them. Work instructions are more step-by-step where you say, first you do this, then you do this, then you do this. And for each work instruction, you’ll likely have a form or you know, something like that, something to fill out, complete, so that you have some evaluative ability as well when the process is done. The forms and the templates are important because they help us to determine did we do this correctly? Did we do it consistently? And is it helping? Right? That’s these are the key things that we are asking. You know, it goes back always to efficiency and effectiveness. So are we being as efficient as we can with the resources, those standard operating procedures and work instructions help us to really focus on that? And then the effectiveness is handled by the work forms, the work templates can help us to determine are we falling within those parameters that we have set for performance? Are we between the goalposts, if you will, of our operational performance? And that circles back to the goals that we’ve set as part of our quality policy. So it is also a very circular system with a kind of tiered approach to documentation, as I would see it.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
Appreciate that. Thank you for taking us through those uh everyday terms. When you, Dr. Mosher, look at a facility, what tells you its quality system is healthy? What red flag suggests a system needs attention?
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
I
Spotting A Healthy Quality System
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
Speaker 3
would argue this is where metrics or indicators come into play. So often if I’m in a facility that people know what they’re doing and employees have purpose and are on their way somewhere when you know they know even something as simple as letting me as an outsider onto their property, they have a procedure for that, right? I’m someone that’s not normally there. Where do they send me? Do they have a process? Do they have a secured area that they need to let me into? Do I need permission or can I just waltz through that secure area and come in? That would be one example of something that potentially would maybe make me give a second thought is to say, they’re letting me into the secure area. They’re not requiring me to wear any protective gear, protective equipment. The other thing that might suggest to me that things are not running as they should is a dirty facility, you know, a lot of dust on the floor, tools all over the place, not where they should be placed, things like that, where things are just appeared to be in a bit of a disarray is always to me a bit of a suggestion that things are not running the way they should. That doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s not dust and dirt around, corn or soybeans or wheat on the floor in small portions, is not a huge concern for me because you are handling and working with. But if you had a lot of, you know, if the floor was covered with crop that should be, where is that supposed to be, right? So things out of place, including the products that you’re supposed to be handling, would also be for me of those types of things are examples of a facility where maybe protocols and standard operating procedures are not being followed on a consistent basis. So, and I also look for consistency. Do people know what they’re doing? If you ask them, like, what’s your job in a day? And they can tell you, I think that’s a good sign as well. Or if they say, I don’t know, I just do what I’m told, right? That is not as convincing to me that they are really a part of a larger quality team.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
Those signs become easier to recognize when we connect them to situations people have faced in the field. Can you think of a scenario or share an example where a strong quality system prevented a problem or improved in operation?
Inventory Control Blending Recalls
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
Yes. I think there are a lot of examples. I’m going to use an example in inventory management because I think it really says a lot about the bottom line of an organization. But the ability to understand and hold crop of a specific quality trait, moisture, ore and material, damage, that is really a powerful tool and it is very much helped by quality management systems, not because you get any better grain in when you have a quality management system, but you organize it more efficiently and effectively. So if you have soybeans that come in with a high level of foreign material, you can place those in an area where you have you can either clean them or condition them so that you can remove a lot of that foreign material before you put it into the larger bin for marketing and shipment out. Just having a better idea of where, and not just a better idea, but a specific idea of where each of your crops are and what their general condition is a really valuable tool in terms of being able to blend, for example, for a train car that is going, train cars that are going to a vendor or a customer on the other, you know, one notch down on the supply chain or one notch up, depending on how you look at the supply chain, and really being able to meet those customer expectations from almost a precision level sense, where you could fill the train car knowing that you know that you’ll meet the specifications because you know what you put in there, right? You know the grain, the corn or soy beans that you put in there or the wheat that and what it looked like and what its quality, its approximate quality levels were. And that is a good feeling to know. Another suggestion would be if there’s a problem somewhere, if there is a feed recall or an animal feed recall, and you know with near certainty that your product is not part of that recall because of your inventory records, that is a very good feeling to have, that you are out of the fire, out of the line of fire, if you will, in an emergency situation where they are recalling products somewhat randomly because they don’t know where things are at. If you can know where your product has been shipped, it is a good position to be in the case of a recall.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
I like that. So there’s a lot of lessons to take away from that example, a lot of lessons to take away from that experience. Uh let’s now start with inventory management. You just use that as an example. Where does QMS make the biggest difference there?
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
I think a couple of areas. I think storage life. So, how long are you going to store this material? We’ve had a lot of conversations this fall, um, myself and my colleagues and my grain industry colleagues, on first, we were talking about uh grain that’s too dry, soybeans, corn, and wheat that are coming out of the field at extremely low levels of moisture and maintaining that moisture, which is part of the value of a crop and its test weight and so on. When you shrink away that moisture, you lose market traits that are valuable and can impact the bottom line price. We went from those conversations in managing a product in storage effectively so that you can bring it forward and still have it be worth something, to now, after a week and a half or actually a month and a half of pretty heavy rain. Now we’re thinking about how do you manage wet product? And it’s the same process, really. Being able to know what’s what is in a bin and what you need to move off immediately to sell and to move forward in the supply chain versus what you can hang on to for a bit and blend with some of your lesser, you know, your grain that you bring in that maybe has more damage or has more foreign material, or is it a higher moisture rate or moisture content than the product that you’re holding in the bin? Quality management provides a really good basis for a very robust blending program. It helps you to really blend, as I said earlier, at really precise levels so that you know where product is going. You can blend off your lower quality product at a very precise level so that you know that you can send it through and either through the mechanism of equilibrium moisture content or stirring and blending and combining, you know that you will be in good shape as that train car moves along, potentially moves to the barge and gets down to the foot of the river, Mississippi River for most of us in the upper Midwest, uh United States, is where it’s headed, right? And it has to be preserved down to the bottom of that mouth of the Mississippi. So having that data allows you as an organization to say, this is what this looked like when it left our property, right? So after it leaves the property, it is no longer yours, it no longer can be discounted, right? So you have a pretty good position from my perspective using inventory management. It all really begins with that inventory management at the grain elevator and grain holding facility. So being able to know what you have and the condition it is in is a really powerful piece of information in managing inventory.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
Thank you for sharing that. Dr. Mosier will dig deep into inventory management for those taking that course. I think that’s something really exciting to look forward to for those who enroll or those who suggest enrolling in the course. There are other topics in there, such as relevant standards in grain and feed handling, and that’s kind of where I want to go to next.
Meeting Standards And Recall Readiness
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
How should a facility think about industry standards and translate them into day-to-day work? That can be challenging.
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
Yeah, it can be challenging. I think a couple of ideas. One is that it’s always good to do some benchmarking, I think, against your competitors and against your industry colleagues and stakeholders in how you are performing against those standards. So first you should determine: are you even close to where you should be in terms of those industry standards? And think about them as you work backward to determine are you meeting those standards? And if not, what should be happening to get to those standards? It is really what they often call reverse engineering, going backwards to determine like why are we not meeting these standards? What has to happen in order for us to meet those? And I think quality management and its approach and emphasis on processes is really a helpful way to take that approach down to the core process that potentially will have a major role to play in whether you meet those standards or not. Sometimes it involves a series of processes, sometimes it involves just one core process, and that really determines to a large extent whether you meet those standards or not. So I think the standards provide the guidance and the barometer or the bar, if you will, to reach. And quality management is that process that you use to get there, to meet those standards. And I think it is not that you cannot meet a standard unless you use quality management systems. I am not suggesting that, but what I am saying is that the structure of a quality management system in this environment really does help provide some guidance and some structure to get you there, to have the conversation, which may not be a particularly pleasant conversation in some cases. There’s probably going to be some changes if you are not meeting those standards. And if you are, it provides you an opportunity to recognize your employees and thank them for helping your organization get to where you need to be, right? So it is, again, very employee-based, and employees are involved with processes, and quality management systems are very processed, are very process heavy. And I think that’s how that wraps around into quality management systems, is they provide kind of the mechanism for you to meet and/or exceed those standards if relevant, or to get you there if you are not there, and to really figure out what the difference is and what it’s going to take to reconcile that difference.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
QMS can really provide that guidance and support, like you said. One of the other areas that go in a little bit deeper here in the course is related to QMS support for bioterrorism regulation and compliance and bioterrorism preparedness and related requirements can sound distant from routine operations. So, where do they connect with quality management?
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
Yeah. Good question. Bioterrorism provides a great example of how quality management systems can meet some of those external standards. So one of the standards of quality management systems that we talk a lot about is the 24-hour recall requirement, as well as the needing to know where it’s going and where it’s come from, right? And both of these things are facilitated very well by quality management systems and particularly the inventory management piece of that. The component of that shares and helps us to better track and trace products as they move through our facilities is an important component of many quality management systems. And these are useful when you are in a situation where you need to identify and segregate and remove a lot or several lots of product in a short amount of time. It is also helpful to at least on paper be able to say, we know that this product went to this vendor. It came from this other series of farms or another facility. And to be able to say that with a high level of certainty gives you some peace of mind. Generally, if we have a bioterrorism event, there’s going to be a lot of stress happening, right? It does seem very distant, but the pieces and the components that make up the bioterrorism act are actually part of good management practice anyway. So it is something that you may already be doing as part of your quality management system. And I don’t think if we have a bioterrorism event, it’s going to be just another day at work. But from a process perspective, it could be if you have the things lined up the way you could with a quality management system in bulk areas. So I think both of those things, the 24-hour recall as well as the one-up and one back requirements, can be met very easily with a uh robust uh quality management system.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
I like how you express that. I like that line where bioterrorism, there’s something that happens that day, but with quality management systems, it could be, like you said, every day, because you have well thought out processes and uh have executed on those, and your team
Hiring Vendors And Operational Priorities
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
is ready. So these are important topics. And uh another one is about integrating QMS with operational priorities, and and and that’s also part of this course. But briefly, if you could address sort of this question about you know, how do you integrate QMS with operational priorities as it helps the people doing their work?
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
I think there are a lot of areas where quality management systems can be integrated. I’m gonna talk about one today, and that is just your employee management. Management of employees and human resources is a huge area where it can be helpful to have a quality system in place. And the quality management portion of that is not necessarily measuring the work performance of the employee, although it could be. What it’s measuring is you know how are product how are employees hired? What is the process? Who’s in charge? You know, who writes the job description, who approves it, how long is it released, how many candidates are interviewed, and so on and so forth. And then what’s the criteria that you use when you hire a new employee for this role? And it helps to really drive good and targeted job descriptions so that you are better likely or more likely to get the employee that you are aiming to hire rather than just somebody that shows up because you have a so poorly defined job description. Quality management can help with the operational and technical details of something even like hiring, right? Managing vendors. One of the things that W. Edwards Deming really railed on a lot was the number of vendors that an organization services or has serviced. Making a decision and hiring a new vendor for a particular service can also be an area where quality management principles can be applied. You know, what do we need this vendor to do? What are the criteria that we must have in place for them to be hired? How does that hiring look? How does that process look? And then both the employee and the vendor, how are they evaluated? All of your employees should be evaluated in a similar way, I would imagine. That is true at a lot of organizations. They but it shouldn’t be a generic evaluation. And that part of employee development and vendor appointment sh uh are also good areas where you can use quality management systems.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
Those are just a couple of ways.
Speaker 3
Yeah, a couple of ways that you You can integrate. Yeah.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
A couple ways of using operational priorities. And there’s so many more. So this is very encompassing. And getting it right is important, but it’s not it’s improving over time, right? It is. Yes. And so there’s a lot to consider and reflect and implement. One more thing I want to touch on is we and this is also a big part of the course as well, is cost-benefit analysis and evaluation.
Measuring ROI With Time And Rework
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
So when leaders ask uh about the cost and the return, how should they evaluate the benefits of a quality system?
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
So the in the research that we have done at Iowa State and completed, we have found that many quality management practices have a near two to one return on the money spent to put them in place versus the money that is returned. But I do think there are a lot of ways to measure those returns on investments. And organizations should think about their operation and not just it’s not always dollars and cents. Sometimes it is more indirect than that. Sometimes it is time spent on things, time spent to fix things. Those types of measures can help, and they are more difficult, but they can help support the return on investment calculations for quality management systems. A lot of opportunities, the management review, mock recall, where you run a fake recall, you know, you put the call out that you need to recall something. That’s another way to measure the effectiveness of your inventory management and think about what amount of time that would take and do a comparison, for example. But ultimately, probably the easiest way is to look at the spreadsheet, look at the cost spreadsheet, how much time is spent in training employees versus the returns that they can give you when they know what they’re doing and they are doing the tasks that they perform during the day in a consistent way. So there’s not a lot of rework potentially, or less rework than was previous. Things like that can help you to determine what your return is on a quality management system and how much it is. It need also can help you determine how much return on investment do we need to see to be able to invest in a new piece of equipment, for example, or a new process to set that standard. Quality management systems can help do that as well and can help with those calculations and the logic involved with them. So lots of opportunities to calculate value that resulting from quality management.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
Thank you for that. Consistency is key. Consistency of good sound practices and systems, very important. Now, so far we’ve discussed how or what facilities can do. Let’s look at how the tools available to them may change.
AI Automation And The Next Decade
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
So, how do you expect things like AI, automation, predictive analytics, and you know other digital technologies to influence quality management over the next decade?
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
Well, I certainly think that we are going to see a lot more opportunity to employ some of these tools. We already are beginning to see them pretty heavily in this industry. I think it will slowly replace a lot of our human-based decision making focus areas, right? Decisions in terms of grading and where things are put. But I also would like to point out that humans drive a lot of the automated uh processes. Humans design those automation procedures, and they also really outline the assumptions that we think about when we have AI do things, right? I think when you are working with a theoretical or virtual model of something, a digital twin or something like that, where you’re trying to develop, there is no better way to really understand your system than to design it for the computer’s mind, right? That really provides, I think, a a really interesting perspective on, for example, what a kernel of corn looks like in one state versus the other. When you’re designing it pixel by pixel on the computer, it really is a very different view of the product that you’ve been working with. And that for me, making sure that we can utilize that, that’s the exciting thing for me, is what I should say. I should be thinking so fast, I should finish my sentences before I move on. But I think AI provides us and will provide us tools that I think will ultimately help the industry advance so that our food security levels are higher, our food safety levels are higher, and our animal food safety levels are improved because it will eliminate very human-based mistakes. But not everything. I think going back to the story that I read earlier today on you can design a model, but it has that it is that lived experience that really lends valuable and useful support to that model. We don’t always, you know, the computer can think up a lot of things. And often one of the things that AI can do is to reveal patterns that we would have never thought about before. And it allows us to think about them a little bit, determine what is this? Is this totally screwy or is this something that we should think more about? Something we’ve never thought of before. Sometimes that’s where it helps and things like that. So I think there’s a lot of things it’s going to do. I don’t pretend to know all of them, but I think it’s exciting to think about. And I look forward to see how this develops in the next 10 years and beyond.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
Yeah, absolutely. We think about AI and automation. Uh yeah, you bring up some great points. And I think this is a good conversation.
What The GEAPS QMS Course Teaches
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
And for those who want to go dive deeper and provide a more formal look and examination of quality management systems, Chiefs now offers the course quality management systems for bulk material handling. And so when we think about who this is for, who are the key target audiences, that was a big part of the course development. And yourself and other subject matter experts, you know, had to have a focus, and that focus was primarily for new and emerging supervisors, facility managers, quality control professionals, of course, and administrative personnel involved in quality-related decision making. This course really gives you a unique opportunity to be engaged with quality management systems. It’s not a very, it’s not passive learning. There’s a real practical approach to thinking about the learner and making best use of the time. The course dives deep on topics and they’re very interactive. That may take like two and a half hours, and we give them also the opportunity to dive deeper in some of these other topic areas. What practical skills will learners gain? How is that learning different from simply reading a procedure or reading standards?
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
It’s a good question. And we certainly hope that the course provides a little better and a more comprehensive deep dive than just simply reading a manual. I would like to say the manual provides the what of the quality management systems. And in this course, we will really push you as the learner to really define the why for your organization. And I think the ideal learner for this course is someone who has had some experience working with decisions, but maybe is not a person who has been in place for many years. Although I would not exclude them as well. I think what would be nice is if a person has the ability to and the capability to make process-based decisions within an organization. If you do not have that ability, get into a position where you have that ability, or if you’d like to get into a position, potentially take the course. But I think our target is someone who has this kind of rudimentary familiarity with process management and process decision making is our target. And we hope they leave with that ability to really understand and articulate the why behind quality management systems and processes, the quality policy manual, the standard operating procedures, the work instructions, the forms and templates to really dig in and apply from their facility some realistic examples in their mind as they’re learning. And that’s an important part of the course, I think, is that application to realistic situations.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
Yeah, absolutely. I was just going to emphasize this. So if you consider taking this course, just go to cheeps.com, go to the online courses under the education heading, go to the course catalog, you will find quality management systems there. Again, this course design emphasizes realistic situations, decision-making activities, operational scenarios, and feedback, and moving from beyond passive content delivery and helping learners understand both the how and the why of quality management systems. The quality management systems course, some of those primary learning paths are using and interpreting operational and quality data, QMS structure, including policies, SOPs, work instructions, records, and forms. Like Dr. Mojer said, the course design emphasizes realistic situations, decision-making activities, operational scenarios, and feedback. That feedback is important. That’s where learning takes place, and it’s customized feedback based on the learner. So we’re moving away from and beyond passive content delivery and helping learners understand both the how and the why of quality management systems. The primary path for learning is focusing on using and interpreting operational and quality data, QMS structure, including policies, SOPs, and work instructions, records and forms, compliance, profitability, risk exposure, safety, performance, and traceability, and using data to anticipate risks, identify opportunities, support continuous improvement, which Dr. Moser has described numerous times here in our conversation, and make better operational decisions. A secondary SMART Introductions learning path includes 25 video productions across five industry awareness topics, QMS support for bioterrorism regulation and compliance, relevant standards in green and feed handling, inventory management, integrating QMS with operational priorities, and finally cost-benefit analysis and evaluation. And really, this course is centered around one essential question: how do we best use the data we are collecting to make strategic decisions, continuously improve, and meet or exceed customer expectations? Isn’t that the big takeaway here for this course and what this is all about?
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
It is. It is indeed. Both the how and the why. Yeah, why are we doing this and how are we going to get it done? How are we going to use that data? Absolutely.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
Fantastic. And then one final takeaway here, Dr. Mosher, we’ve covered a lot from the information a facility collects to the decisions people make with it. If you could give every green professional one piece of advice they could begin applying tomorrow, what would it be?
One Thing To Do Tomorrow
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
My advice would be before you begin to collect quote-unquote new data, look to see what you are already collecting and have on hand and see how you can use that in a more enhanced way rather than build something new. See what you have and work from there.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
This is Dr. Gretchen Mosier. Thank you, Dr. Mosier, for joining us and helping us see how quality management can support better decisions across a green operation. And thanks to everyone listening to the Full Green Podcast. Thank you, Dr. Mosier.
Dr. Gretchen Mosher
You’re very welcome. Thanks for having me.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)
A special thank you to Dr. Gretchen Mosher of Iowa State University for joining us and sharing her expertise on quality management systems. One of the most important takeaways from today’s conversation is that quality management isn’t simply about meeting requirements or maintaining documentation, it’s about creating systems that help people make better decisions, recognize problems earlier, and continuously improve the way work gets done. And that applies to grain operations of every size. If today’s conversation has you thinking about how to strengthen quality management at your own facility, I encourage you to explore Jeeps online learning opportunities, including our new course on quality management systems or material handling. You can learn more about GEAPS educational programs, professional development opportunities and industry resources at GEAPS.com. That’s G-E-A-P-S.com. And if you enjoyed today’s conversation, please subscribe to the Whole Grain Podcast and your favorite podcast platform. Share this episode with a colleague and explore our previous conversations featuring experts and professionals from across the grain handling and processing industry. I’m Jim Lenz, Director of Global Education and Training at GEAPS. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, stay curious, and let’s continue learning and growing together. We’ll see you next time on the Whole Grain Podcast.
