MESSAGE FROM THE EDUCATION CHAIR

"An Educational Experiment"

Section Members & Honored Eavesdroppers,

Next month's section meeting promises to be an educational experiment.  The ideal outcome will be a 100% audience lead discussion but with only our July panel discussion meeting experience to draw from, this "experiment" will be more revolutionary than evolutionary.  Either way, it should be fun and the board is tossing in free food to make up for the worst case ... I wont go there ... <smile>.

Here's our present guidelines: 

• Roundtable discussion wherein the audience is the panel. 

• We will ask the membership to tell us about a quality challenge or question they face, any type of quality problem, obstacle or technical question is appropriate. 

• Those items submitted in advance will be compiled into a list. 

• Our Chair (Doug) will moderate the discussion and we will go through the items submitted as well as canvas the floor for contributions. 

• Doug will also have a list of questions for the audience, to challenge members to think. The idea is to show everyone how we can all contribute, and that our strength lies in our collective experience. 

The subject and goal of the meeting will be "Persistent Quality Problems and How to Solve Them." Each member of the section is invited to send in their most challenging quality problems to Doug McCloskey (dm@grantrothbard.com). These problems can be organizational, strategic, cultural, statistical, tactical, you name it, if it creates an obstacle to achieving quality in your workplace, send it on in and we will discuss it as a group. 

The goal is to harness the power of our section. Let's see if we can use our collective experience, education and ideas to help each other make breakthrough improvements and overcome those quality challenges that impede progress. This is also a great night to bring a friend (tell him or her you're buying!). 

We would really like to see some new faces and here everyone's input so don't be shy! If you are sending in an issue and you would prefer that you or your employer remain anonymous, please indicate that in your email and we will respect your request. We look forward to seeing you there on October 10th!

Current Educational Course Status

• Several new courses are now being offered (CQI, CQA, CQM/OE, and Stats for CQE and CSSBB).  See details on our refresher course page.

Other Announcements

• Several new jobs have recently been posted on our jobs page.  In addition, we have recently split that page into two pages in order to facilitate printing and upload speed.  See http://www.asqsandiego.org/jobs.htm and keep sending them in.  

• Don't forget to check out our sponsor pages.  Great courses and products being offered!!  See links at the bottom of this email. 

• Don't forget to check out other local events on our local event calendar. 

Sincerely,

Dave Clinard 

Education Committee Chair

ASQ Section 0703 

This month we are highlighting: 

Reliability Engineering - Part 12

"Reliability Modeling and Prediction" 

by Hank Posters

Adobe pdf file (78kb; free reader link at page bottom)

Reliability modeling is a technique used to evaluate and predict the reliability of products and systems, including their components and sub-systems. As the name indicates, the purpose of reliability predictions is to “predict” future performance of new products and/or systems. For predictions to be reliable and meaningful they must be based on data obtained from a variety of test programs and actual performance experience.      

Slides from last meeting

by this month's speaker Diane G. Kulisek

• Click here to download the file (416kb Adobe pdf Document; reader link pg bottom)

• Find a lot more free forms and presentations on Diane's website at http://www.capatrak.com/index.htm

• See details of the meeting at http://www.asqsandiego.org/news/sep07mtgmail.htm#tmm   

Whether or not there is a requirement for Customer Satisfaction Assessment within your organization, it makes good business sense to know what your Customers think. While surveys are the most common format for assessing Customer Satisfaction, there are many other ways by which to effectively do so. 

Diane provided an overview of Customer Satisfaction Assessment methods, share links to popular on-line Customer Satisfaction tools, summarize Customer Satisfaction requirements pertaining to some of the most common Quality Management System guidelines / regulations, review examples of Customer Satisfaction metrics and gave some experienced insights about how individuals and organizations can turn Customer Satisfaction outcomes into valuable improvement actions.