“With the recent release of the movie The Avengers: Age of Ultron, now is the perfect time to contemplate whether Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, needs a quality management system (QMS) to help him identify and prevent the disasters that seem to plague him.
Tony Stark is a billionaire genius who inherited defense contractor Stark Industries from his father. Through a trilogy of films, we see Tony get into some serious dilemmas and create various Iron Man suits in the process to help him keep the villains under wraps. Clearly, he’s got a massive operation with his superhero persona, but how is he keeping things in compliance and defect-free? Does Iron Man have a quality management system? Does he need one?
Let’s take a minute to consider the components of a QMS that could have helped Iron Man stay on track and out of trouble:
Specification management
Tony Stark has gone through more than 40 suits since becoming Iron Man. Why? Continuous improvement keeps him alive and well. He tests out each suit himself and thereby learns firsthand what needs to be fixed, but these insights often happen at the most inopportune times. For example, at one point he wanted to test the upgrades to his first suit, Mark I, because the faulty flight system needed some work. The upgraded version, Mark II, proved to have a much better flight system, but he realized (albeit a bit too late) that this suit iced over when he reached too high an altitude. With the help of J.A.R.V.I.S., his artificial intelligence assistant, he was able to land safely but not before making a mental note to fix that problem in a later version of the suit.
If Iron Man had a specification management process in an automated QMS, things would have been a bit easier for him from the beginning. Specification management helps to manage the various iterations of products and their overall effect on the product life cycle. By tracking and controlling all of the data related to each product version in a centralized system, he could have easily accessed all the information related to each of his suits, integrating each component, supplier, and raw material, and then creating processes to guide improvement and reduce overall cost (although cost doesn’t ever seem to be on Tony’s mind).
Supplier management
I’ve always looked at Tony’s operation and wondered how he got all these materials in his garage—it’s a pretty high-tech and resource-intensive “man cave,” after all. Does he require suppliers? Most likely; no one simply has palladium sitting around his garage. Tony needs to have a pretty extensive and secure supply chain. Not only does he need to be able to trust his suppliers and the materials they provide him, but he also can’t afford delays and poor supplier quality. One bad part, and the whole operation is shot. I would think that by having an extensive supplier management system in place, he could properly source his suppliers by their raw materials, record inspection results, send supplier corrective actions, and quickly reject any defective materials. Plus, he needs to have suppliers he can trust; discretion is important in his line of work. Having a centralized supplier management system would enable him to rate his suppliers and conduct risk assessments on their quality, while allowing him to quickly assess whether the materials provided meet his superhero-caliber quality standards.
Training management
You might think, “It’s just Tony—why would he need a training system?” Go with me on this. When Tony first became Iron Man, he created his own personal energy device (a miniature version of his father’s Arc Reactor), which is essentially akin to a medical device that keeps shrapnel from getting into his heart. The downside to this is that his Arc Reactor was created using palladium, a material that turns out to be slowly poisoning him. In an effort to keep this a secret and to keep Stark Enterprises under control, Tony appoints his assistant, Pepper Potts, as the new CEO. This brings us to another key QMS feature: training. You don’t run Iron Man’s enterprise without proper training.
On the superhero level, Col. Rhoades took over the use of one of the Iron Man suits, ultimately becoming the Iron Patriot. He needed to learn the system, its functionality, and discover all the nuances of running the suit to be an effective solider. Training becomes key, and “Rhoadie” had a few missteps along the way, from getting his suit hacked, to learning the system, and more. With a little training, he might have had an easier time getting acclimated to the suit more quickly.
Corrective action
Tony Stark runs into a lot of issues with each prototype, but how does he keep track of the issues that need to be opened as a corrective action as opposed to other, more minor problems? Tony’s corrective action system is essentially him saying, “OK, let’s not do that again,” which is hardly a process-based approach, if you ask me. He could benefit from a corrective action system here to identify the major issues (e.g., a failing flight system) so he could fix those first, as opposed to the smaller problems like the wrong shade of red in his suit. His corrective action system would take him through all of the steps, from the initial investigation to root cause analysis, so he can get straight to the critical issue and work on getting it fixed. Corrective action is the central catalyst for change in a QMS, and although Tony can perhaps afford to take the “Let’s not do that again” approach, organizations that are a little more risk-averse cannot. This is why corrective action is so vital to many organizations’ compliance efforts.
Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA)
No one has a faster product life cycle than Tony Stark. He’s gone through a lot of trial and error, and he’s faced a ton of design issues. Here’s where FMEA could have helped. With each suit he finds something else to fix, and with each improvement there’s another hazard around the corner. An FMEA system would help Iron Man track where the issues are with each suit within the design. This would help him identify more potential failures within the design before he goes off field-testing the suits. J.A.R.V.I.S. continually tells him that his suits aren’t “Fully tested yet, sir,” and yet he still runs off with reckless abandon. Having a more process-based approach to mitigating risk in design with FMEA might help him to identify failures early, promote continuous improvement, and allow him to see where there’s a need for change. In summary—listen to J.A.R.V.I.S., Tony.
Change management
Tony has gone through so many iterations of his suits that a change management system should really be a requirement. How else would he keep track of all the changes that need to be made? Using a change management system, Iron Man could handle these changes much more efficiently, and if anything goes wrong he can track back through the workflow to see exactly where each issue originated. If change management is also integrated with his other systems, then the QMS could communicate directly with J.A.R.V.I.S., meaning that Iron Man has an extra level of assurance, risk mitigation, and overall security when it comes to the compliance effect that each design change might have.
Risk management
Who needs risk management more than Iron Man? OK, in the Marvel universe maybe quite a few others, but we’ll address them some other time. What did Tony do when Mark II froze midflight? He enlisted the help of J.A.R.V.I.S., who helped him to safety. But imagine if he had something proactive, like a bowtie risk management system. He would have been able to assess the possible risks of all his suits, as well as the barriers that he could have established to reduce the effect of the risk of his suit failing—before it happens. This proactive approach to safety could have helped him avoid numerous disasters.
Here’s another take on risk. Look at “working” with the Avengers. At first, each one of them “tested” Tony’s abilities, often with somewhat damaging consequences. So, with each encounter, he’s building a list of potential hazards with working with folks like Thor and The Hulk. By identifying these hazards, he can effectively build new controls to prevent these hazards from recurring. As an example, Tony has more than 40 suits—each one is a “control” for a different hazard he might encounter. My favorite is the “HulkBuster,” a suit that’s designed purely to deal with The Hulk and the “hazards” that he presents to the Avengers. In your organization, you may not need controls like a HulkBuster, but having a set of risk mitigation controls and the ability to identify, mitigate, and prevent risks is the key to staying in compliance. For Tony, it’s about staying alive when “Hulk Smash.”
Which brings me to my case in point:
Spoiler alert! Iron Man doesn’t use a QMS; almost ends humanity via Ultron
Ultron is the result of Tony’s well-meaning attempt to stop threats and pinpoint bad guys by using automated defense systems. Now, I know we say automation is key, but in this case it got just a little out of hand. Ultron was meant to be a proactive means of stopping crime, but it doesn’t quite turn out this way. Ultron is a good example of what can happen when a superhero lacks visibility and control, and his product gets out of hand with hazards that he didn’t see coming.
Maybe if Iron Man had some of these QMS tools, he would have been able to identify these potential hazards, conduct risk assessments, and built in measures to mitigate any risks the Ultron could pose (e.g., a desire to exterminate all of humanity). He could then have put controls in place to prevent this from getting happening or to reduce the effects of the consequences.
However, had Iron Man reaped the benefits of a QMS, Avengers: Age of Ultron would probably not exist, and all would be well at Stark Industries—and that would be boring for us. So perhaps things are as they should be, at least in the Marvel cinematic universe.
For the rest of us, we may not face catastrophes the size of Tony Stark’s, but it can certainly seem that way when dealing with adverse events. Learn how the QMS can help you mitigate your risk by downloading the white paper here.”
Source: QualityDigest
