Christoph Voigtmann wins Walter-Masing-Award for Best Performance in Quality Management in 2018
The German Society for Quality (DGQ) awarded the Walter Masing Award for Best Performance in Quality Management 2018 on November 6. The winner is Christoph Voigtmann from the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) of RWTH Aachen University, who shares the award with Dr. Benjamin Häfner from the wbk Institute for Production Technology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
Christoph Voigtmann receives part of the 10,000 Euro prize for his research work on the "Risk of minimally invasive surgical drilling processes" on risk modelling during surgery. In his work, he deals with minimally invasive surgical procedures that replace conventional surgical procedures because they lead to a lower number of complications and a shorter recovery time. However, in order to perform and optimize these procedures, the risk of injury for the patient must be assessed prior to surgery. The positioning of the drills and the temperature development can lead to injuries of important nerves or vessels. Planning and ensuring the quality of this automated drilling is therefore a major challenge for current research.
Christoph Voigtmann's work uses a concrete example to illustrate the challenges involved in planning these operations and the factors that contribute to the risk of injury for the patient. For the first time an overall model for the patient risk is derived from this, which can be used for the approval and optimization of the procedures.
In addition an appreciation was given to Dr. phil. Ina Heine (WZL) for her work on "Quality Orientation in Middle Management - Development and Validation of a Situational Judgement Test". In her work she presents the empirical development and validation process of the Heine Scale for Managerial Quality Orientation (HSMQ), which makes quality orientation measurable in middle management. The development of this instrument is based on the results of previous research, in which organizational culture was identified as an essential factor for the failure of strategic change processes.
The work is based on the assumption that middle management in particular has an influence on the dominant culture of an organisation. A distinct quality orientation in this target group therefore favours a strong quality culture. The method of the Situational Judgment Test (SJTs) has been selected as the solution approach, taking into account various methods for personnel selection and their criterion-related validity. The data analyses show significant positive correlations between the two result variables "general job satisfaction and work commitment" and "perceived quality performance of the department". In addition, there are significant positive correlations between the quality culture and the two result variables.