American Society for Quality
Section 0904 - East Central Indiana
PO Box 3147 Muncie, IN 47307-1147
www.asq904.org
The source of Quality Professionalism in East Central Indiana
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December 2005 Membership Meeting Wednesday, December 7, 2005
Chair Chat - by Steve Zylka - December 2005 Dec. 1, 2005 To paraphrase Thomas Paine: "These are times that try our souls". The government announced that economic growth was strong in the fall months of 2005, but we keep hearing of companies, most the stalwarts of the community, closing their doors, or merging, or filing for bankruptcy. If we get caught in a bad situation, we can sit and brood or count our blessings and move on. A research study, conducted by the American Society for Quality (ASQ), the world’s leading authority on quality, and derived from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), the nation’s leading measure of customer satisfaction, provides evidence of a dramatic drop in service quality along with an apparent stabilization in product quality. In most industries, quality improvement has failed to keep pace with customer expectations, indicating that there is significant room for opportunity in both sectors to improve business results through better quality systems and processes. "There is no anchor to customer expectations," said Jack West, ASQ past president. "What customers expect today is not what they expected 10 years ago. Successful companies must continually ramp up their quality practices to keep pace with ever-increasing consumer demands." I keep hearing of businesses that had moved South because of NAFTA moving back because of quality issues. Are companies actually believing that quality counts? Wow, what a novel idea, quality above (or at least equal to) cost. Many published papers show that hospitals, hotels, and other service companies are moving to improve there bottom line by being more efficient and improving their out going quality so they can maintain their customer base. Roger Hirt spoke to us in May about Six Sigma being used to help citizens around Fort Wayne. Marilyn Sherrill spoke to us a few months ago on how Six Sigma was helping patients reduce their stay at Ball Hospital. The ASQ web site has a white paper on how the Phoenix Police Department achieved ISO 9001 registration. According to the paper, Phoenix is the sixth largest city in the US and first to achieve ISO registration. So what does this tell us? I believe it tells us that, while "These are times that can try our souls", for those out of work, jobs in the quality profession are still around. All we need to do is broaden our search criteria. And, for those who are employed, being advocates of quality can not be a bad thing. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year or Seasons Greetings or to our Jewish Brothers and Sisters Happy Chanukah. In other languages we might say (courtesy of www.flw.com/merry.htm): Wesolych Swiat i Szczesliwego Nowego Roku En frehlicher Grischtdaag unen hallich Nei Yaahr Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhdestva i s Novim Godom Craciun fericit si un An Nou fericit Buon Natale e Felice Anno Nuovo Nollaig Shona Dhuit Steve Zylka 2005-2006 Chair
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