Our Organization and a Little History

The QCA was created in 1991 in partnership with the Government of Alberta as a member-based, not for profit organization assisting organizations improve performance through continuous quality improvement.

In the first few years of our incorporation, the QCA sponsored a series of conferences with leading quality practitioners and theorists from across North America. Not surprisingly, these conferences were a major success story. We are currently in the process of posting the leading papers from these conferences to our website and will continue to do so as time permits.

Since 2001, however, interest in conferences wained, and the QCA pursued other avenues  in distributing the message of quality across the Alberta – with special emphasis centres outside of Edmonton and Calgary. This has included teleconferences and the maintenance of a materials library. These initiatives met with limited success. Library use, for example, has dropped as the use of technology and the Internet has enhanced access to information.

Which means that times change. New web 2.0 technology, web-based e-Learning and  related information technologies have led us to a drastic rethinking of how we pursue our aim. We are transitioning to this new environment, using these tools to support our members and organizations  across western Canada.

At the same time our mission has shifted slightly. The new technology has made access to information easy.  Organizations face a tsunami of  information on Quality Management and related technologies such as Lean, Six Sigma, Voice of the Customer, Evolutionary Operations, Agile Development, Competing on Time and so forth. Some of this information is good, some is merely acceptable and much of it is garbage. The QCA, therefore, is attempting to provide its members with sound, reliable information on Quality.

These efforts are taking root. Since 2009, membership has risen sharply (more than tripled) and our Newsletter is gaining wide circulation as a must read in the Quality community. Our programming uptake, especially the training on Lean and Lean Six Sigma is growing significantly and is now providing sufficient revenue to our operations to cover operating costs. All this has allowed us to cement our position as the leading and only independent voice on Quality in Alberta.