The last Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting of 2025 welcomed three first-timers, among the eight attendees. One of them was preparing for his ASQ Six Sigma Green Belt (GB) certification and was interested in joining ASQ.
One of the attendees was a leader of a service provider using artificial intelligence (AI) to help their pharmaceutical clients in the quality and compliance area. He shared with us some of the work they did to automate tasks, reduce errors, and improve consistency.
Unsurprisingly, the topic of AI triggered many questions and responses among attendees. For example
- Where do we see the most improvement when AI automates the tasks?
- How much do we improve the the process before implementing AI or automation?
- How do the AI models or tools integrate with the existing Quality Management Systems (QMS)?
- How do we address regulatory or compliance concerns related to AI implementation?
Another attendee shared their experience using AI to process large amounts of literature and documents that humans just could not handle. But with AI, human experts only have to review a select subset of documents or a summary of the information. It sounded like many organizations have started experimenting with AI to evaluate its effectiveness and potential issues.
One of the concerns was people’s ability to learn and adapt to new technology vs. the speed of technological advance.
- Who are responsible for keeping up with the change?
- How much do employees have to learn on their own vs. training provided by employers?
- How can the educational system, such as universities, prepare students for the future?
There was a general consensus among the participants that data integrity training provided by employers was insufficient and junior employees might not have the opportunity to build experience or critical thinking if AI was widely implemented.
The interest and discussion about AI will certainly continue in future meetings. So join us in 2026 at our monthly SIG meetings on the second Thursday at Frontier RTP.
Happy Holidays!