American Society for Quality, Philadelphia Section 0505

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A Letter from the Chair of the American Society for Quality Philadelphia Section 0505

Li-Chung Huang, CMQ/OE, CQA, CQE, PE, RAC, MS, MBA

Dear ASQ Members: On behalf of the Leadership Committee, I would like to welcome you to the ASQ community in the Greater Philadelphia area (ASQ-Philly). ASQ-Philly has a long and distinguished history of promoting quality and influencing change and we welcome your thoughts. Our local section has three focused areas for this year which are involvement of members, partnership with corporations, and improvement of member career development. Here are the highlights from the two most recent activities that ASQ-Philly has been involved in:

The dinner program, “Positive Deviance”, highlighted a new process improvement approach and was successfully delivered by joint efforts of health care organizations. It is the first dinner meeting that ASQ-Philly partnered with Red Cross and was held in downtown Philadelphia.

The National Quality Month Statistics Symposium was held at Penn State University – Great Valley Malvern Campus on 07 Oct 2011 and was attended by 60 professionals. This program has become an integral part of the on-going education and career development for quality professionals in all segments of industry. The program provides the opportunity to improve real-life process through academic excellence.

During the current fiscal year, the Leadership Committee will be reaching out to obtain your input on issues and concerns. We are particularly interested in how the changes to the education and program tracks have affected you and your career advancement, your views about mentoring and your thoughts about the current academic and industry climates.

In addition to soliciting your opinions, we welcome your suggestions, and can be reached by email at info@asq.org. You can also contact me directly at lichung.huang@yahoo.com. Here are a few of the recent initiatives that ASQ-Philly Leadership Team and I hope to improve our services to you:

The Section Operating Policy Project is an initiative started many years ago that resulted in a draft policy document. With recent additional efforts from several individuals in the Leadership Team, the current draft section operating policy is now available. It is posted on this site. The finalization of this operating policy brings a decade-long effort into a tool that is expected to streamline the process and the consistency of the section’s operation.

A Web Site Project was initiated by a small core team with support from former ASQ-Philly Section Chair in 1991, Michael Jensen, to switch the section web site to a more user-friendly platform.

Recruiting of Marketing Committee Chair and Co-Chairs for all committees is an effort to increase member involvement and to strengthen our outreach to members and potential customers. Due to your enthusiastic responses, we have already seen excellent planning and delivery taking place in the Program Committee. We are still actively looking for a Co-Chairperson and committee members for all committee functions (Certification, Education, Marketing, Membership, Newsletter, Program, Publicity, Secretary, Treasurer, and Web Design).

Please indicate your top three choices of interests in becoming a volunteer on the survey form we hand out during each ASQ-Philly program dinner meeting or at the email listed above. “Program to Enhance Job Searching Skills”, implemented in 2010, is designed to provide members with the tools and skills to secure employment and to enhance career development. Recently I have been contacted by Johnson and Johnson to assist in filling approximately 60 quality professional positions in the coming months for its subsidiaries in PA and NJ. These job openings will be posted on our current web site and our new beta-testing web site as we receive the information from J&J.

ASQ-Philly is facing complex and exciting challenges in the dynamic economic environment. My colleagues on the Leadership Committee and I look forward to working with you to enhance the quality experience so that together we can further the work and missions of ASQ.

Best Regards