Section 0401
NEWSLETTER

September 2012 (Volume 62 - Issue 6)

Our objective: To increase awareness, interest, and involvement in Section activities and quality-related subjects. 
Visit our web site at http://www.asqmontreal.qc.ca/

1 - Next Event

8 - 2012-13 Planned Events

15 - Upgrade to Senior Member

2 - Ad / Publicité

9 - Welcome to our New Members

16 - Unemployed Member Dues 

3 - The Editor's Corner

10 - Sustaining Members

17 - Feedback/Advertising Rates

4 - A Word from Your Section Chair

 11 - Other ASQ Events


5 - Had You Come to the Last Event

12 - ASQ News

6 - Voice Of The Customer

13 -  Section Education Program
7 - The Interview Corner 14 - Executive Committee Meetings & Officers

1. Next Event

Date

    Wednesday, September 19, 2012   

Time

    6:00 PM

Place

Sheraton Montreal Airport Hotel

     555 McMillan Avenue
Dorval, Quebec
H9P 1B7
(MAP - DIRECTIONS)


The Shainin System

Chris Psinas  B. Eng
.Senior Manager, Business Transportation

Air Canada


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Please join us on September 19th to hear our guest speaker present the topic of the Shainin System.

The Shainin System TM (SS) is the name given to a problem solving system, with its associated strategies and tools, developed by Dorian Shainin, and widely used and promoted in the manufacturing sector. Much of SS is neither well documented, nor adequately discussed in peer-reviewed journals. The goal of this presentation is to provide a general overview of some of the SS tools and methods, as well as the guiding philosophy and principles.

Most engineers have heard of the Shainin System, but are incapable of differentiating it from other problem solving tools and systems. It is an important subject that must be addressed, as making improvements in products or manufacturing processes is one of the most challenging, and frustrating tasks confronting industry today. Solving complex problems in manufacturing involves proposing hypotheses and testing them - an approach typically found wanting as experiments may drag on for months or even years. And after every proposed solution has been exhausted, there will be a series of new and ever-changing challenges and variables. This is where the introduction to Shainin’s Red X strategies begins – solving problems in manufacturing.

On most occasions your experience and common sense will help you solve problems.  However, there will come a time where a problem is so complex, that your intuition and experience will fail you - and you must fall back and rely on a method of problem solving – that method is the Shainin System.

2. Ad / Publicité




Chris Psinas is a Senior Manager in Business Transformation at Air Canada. His current mandate is to lead Air Canada's Operational Excellence program, including culture change, deploying Shainin problem solving and continuous improvement methods and systems, and leading Lean Manufacturing initiatives in airport operations.

Chris has over 20 years of experience in operations, manufacturing, supply chain and quality assurance for small/mediumsized companies, as well as large multinational organizations including: Denso (Toyota), Chrysler, General Motors, ABB and Alstom. He obtained his Mechanical Engineering degree from Concordia University in Montreal in 1993.
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Cost: ASQ Members ($40), Non-Members ($50)

Supper and Parking are included.

Bring your business cards and be ready to network.

To register for any event or for more information on events please contact:
Sukhvinder Jutla
Tel: (450) 647-8092
E-mail: Sukhvinder.Jutla@pwc.ca

3. The Editor's Corner

By Michael Bournazian, Eng., Newsletter Editor


As I noted in the May 2012 newsletter, I was going to miss the this year’s annual ASQ golf tournament due to an already planned long weekend in Saratoga Springs, New York. The plan did include playing golf in the area, and for this, I had to research the local area courses and then make the appropriate reservations. This exercise alone turned into a lesson in customer satisfaction.

You may remember my article from the November 2011 newsletter, detailing my experience in purchasing a new car after having my previous one totalled in an accident. I had concluded that the quality of the customer service that I received on all fronts exceeded my expectations, and therefore resulted in me having a better overall experience in purchasing the new car and dealing with the insurance company.

Flash forward to July 2012 and here I am on the phone calling up golf courses in the Saratoga Springs area to try and reserve tee-times. The first 2 calls resulted in me talking with people who either could not properly explain to me the different costs of playing at different times, or could just not be understood given their strong, unintelligible accents. Frustrated after only calling 2 courses (and 2 of the nicer and well-known ones in the area, I might add), I gave up for the day and decided to try again the following evening.

Result: customer satisfaction was not achieved.

The following evening’s attempts were polar opposite in terms of outcome. The 2 courses I called resulted in me being treated like a valued guest: questions regarding cost, directions to the courses and the scheduling of tee-times were all handled professionally and effectively. And in the end, I played one course on the Saturday and one on the Sunday , and had fun doing so.

Result: customer satisfaction was achieved.

I will repeat verbatim what I wrote in my November 2011 article: “It's hard to be perfect, impossible in fact. But whether your customer is your boss, the purchaser of your product or your spouse, the effort one puts into providing a better than expected service will more often than not pay off in the end, in my opinion. So always strive to give the best quality service to your customers”.

P.S. Don’t ask me how I played :-)


4. A Word from your Section Chair

By Bill Wilson, Section Chair


Hello Members.

It is the start of the 2012 - 2013 season of activities and the executive like all quality professionals use the PDCA cycle.

This week the executive planned our objectives for this year’s activities in the form of a business plan. ASQ requires the submission of a business plan each year with an improvement over the last year’s plan. Our proposed improvement for this year is the letter C, CHECK. This where you, the members, do your part, and what the executive would like to CHECK is your feedback/comments. Anything you would care to share, subjects for events, how to improve communications, etc. The website is always open and executive contacts are available so we can be reached.

During your busy quality lives or when you are having a bit of quality time, share a moment and a thought with your ASQ family. Hope to hear from you soon or see you at one of our events: we can CHECK things there too! After all a good letter C makes a much better letter A.

Give me your feedback by e-mail

5. Had You Come to the Last Event

By Eric Stern, ASQ Senior Member, CQA, Publicity co-chair

Had you come . . . to the Golf Tournament

It seems like a good idea to follow up the golf tournament with a short dialog on a quality related subject. The idea was to repeat an exercise that had been successful with a younger audience in a different occasion. Identification of tools, agreement on the needs of the clients, demonstration of the value of choosing the priority of quality projects based on their importance, the limitations of work instructions without their explicit rationale, and the value of the constructive dialog in solving problems were presented by Raymond Dyer interactively with the audience. The fact that the speaker, Raymond Dyer, gave me a ride to the site and back caused a potential conflict of interest that I try to keep at a minimum.

My own limitations affected my experience and opinions. My hearing is not what it used to be and noise that others don’t even perceive makes me anxious and nervous. In this case I could focus less on the presentation and the response of the audience while worrying about my ability to filter out the relevant information. I found myself also overanalyzing the stated problems and therefore being slow in coming up with the “obvious” solutions. While a short conversation on an interesting subject can bring the audience together, some seemed to prefer to compartmentalize the fun of golf and meeting friends and possibly advance their business relationships. The lack of the traditional survey at the end of the event is consistent with this impression of mine.

At the end I was too tired to verify whether my opinion is shared by others. The drawing of prizes and related photo opportunities took another portion of our time and my energy. Made me think of the distinction between the special cause of good golf players and the common cause of picking winning numbers out of the hat; I won an umbrella without even playing. But I did reconnect with a number of old friends.

P.S. Participants in the golf tournament looked quite happy; the weather had been optimal.
           
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Eric Stern, CQA, senior member, publicity co-chair, developmental coach and consultant at Expertech CMSC, expressing his own opinions.
ericst@iseffective.com
For networking with local quality professionals explore these groups: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Quality_Montreal/ http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=90170

6. Voice of the Customer

By Raymond E. Dyer, ASQ Senior Member, CMQ/OE, CQA, Voice of the Customer & Historian


Update on the 2012 Survey

Three more survey results trickled in since my last newsletter article, so now it's 43 out of 348 members that started the May 2012 online section survey, but only 29 that completed it.

For the question "Overall, how satisfied are you with your membership in ASQ Montreal Section 0401?", of the 26 members that answered: none said "Not at all", none said "Not very", 2 said "Somewhat", 10 said "Mostly", 12 said "Very", 2 said "Don't know", and none said "No comment". We agreed to measure our member satisfaction as (0.25 x # of “Not very” + 0.5 x # of “Somewhat” + 0.75 x # of “Mostly” + # of “Very”) divided by (# of responses - # of “Don’t know” - # of “No comment”). That would make it (0.25 x 0 + 0.5 x 2 + 0.75 x 10 + 12)/(26-2) = 85.4%.

We also agreed to measure our member level of interest as (# of responses to “Satisfaction” question - # of “Don’t know” - # of “No comment”) divided by (# of responses to “Satisfaction” question). That would make it (26 – 2 – 0)/(26) = 92.3%.

As indicated last article, we’ll continue to take whatever feedback you give to do the best we can and provide you, our members, a Quality service. Future articles will share some of the survey learnings. Meanwhile, thanks to those of you that responded and please don't wait for a survey to give us your feedback!

7. The Interview Corner

By Kostya Polinkevych, CSQE, ASQ Senior Member

We unfortunately do not have a new interview to present in this month's Newsletter.  Please check back here in October. 

8. 2012-13 Planned Events

By Sukhvinder S. Jutla, 2012-13 Program Chair

Date, time, and location will be confirmed as we progress into the year.  Most events are planned for Wednesday evenings and are held at the Sheraton Montreal Airport Hotel.   Watch the Newsletter and our web site for further details.


Date

Event
September 19, 2012 The Shainin System
October 17, 2012 Conference/Mentoring Event with Student Branch
November 21, 2012 Quality in Healthcare (Initiatives & Successes)
January 30, 2013 Supplier Follow-up
February 20, 2013 Special Processes & Auditing (i.e. NADCAP)
March 20, 2013 PPAP (Production Part Approval Process)
April 24,  2013 AS9100
May 15, 2013 Human Factors
July 2013
 **Golf Tournament**



To register for any event of for more information on events please contact: Sukhvinder Jutla at (450) 647-8092 or e-mail at Sukhvinder.Jutla@pwc.ca.

9. Welcome to our New Members

JUNE 2012
Ehsan Ayati
Swagata Das
Flor Marlene Diaz
Mohamed Ghadi
Veronica Marquez
Gholamreza Sayyadi

JULY 2012
Behnoosh Bahmanyar
Patrick Fortin

AUGUST 2012
Merazka Abdenour
Alfred John Chellanthara
Iman Majdi
Serge Foffe Saamago
Ashutosh Singh

10. Sustaining Members

ASQ Montreal Section thanks our Sustaining (Site) Members:

SC Johnson Home Storage

QMI - SAI Global

11. Other ASQ Events

ASQ Montreal Universities Student Chapter (Thursday, September 13, 2012)

September 2012
The Student Chapter is back in session and will be holding their next event on Thursday, September 13, 2012.  Their guest speaker will be Mr. Mutair Kadiri of Honeywell Aerospace, who will discuss the application of Six Sigma tools in supplier development.  Click HERE to view the complete event information.

October 2012: a RSVP with pre-registration is required to attend this event.
ASQ CONFERENCE AND MENTORING EVENT
October 18, 2012
HEC MONTREAL, 3000, chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine Montréal, Québec, Canada H3T 2A7) Price for each event: $10 (pre-registration), $20 (at the door for each event).  This is a two part event. The price is $10 for the conference event and $10 for the mentoring event.  The combined price of $20 covers registration for both events.

The event is divided into two parts: the first event would be the conference event starting at 2 PM. The event will feature esteemed speakers who have an extensive experience in the field of quality (Blackbelts and Master Blackbelts). The second part of the event features a Mentoring event, a very popular event, where you can have interaction with the Mentors and ask as many questions as you wish. It is an annual event and you do not want to miss both of these events. The mentoring event is open to "new ASQ members" and/or "student" members.

As space is limited, a pre-registration is required. Space is available on First-come-first-serve basis. Please send your RSVP to Rajesh-Kumar Tyagi via email indicating your ASQ membership number before October 11, 2012.

Please visit the Student Chapter website here for more information about upcoming events and much more.

ASQ Denver Section 1300 (February 6-9, 2013)

The ASQ Denver, Colorado section will be holding the Rocky Mountain Quality Conference, at the Arvada Center for the Performing Arts in Denver, Colorado, from February 6-9, 2013.  Information about this conference can be found on the section's website!

12. ASQ News

ASQ’s Flagship Magazine Is Going Digital
Beginning September 1, Quality Progress will be available in print, online, and in a new digital format ideal for computer screens and mobile devices such as iPads and Kindle Fires. Available through a browser-enabled viewer, the new format will feature technology that allows the reader to flip through pages, zoom in and out of viewing, and jump via hyperlinks to specific content within and outside of the magazine. Get an exclusive sneak peek of the new digital Quality Progress by selecting the link below.
Digital version of Quality Progress . . . .

Using Process Improvement to Help the Community - Quality for Life™ Video
With a passion for process improvement, ASQ member Elena Kuznesova wanted to use her skills to make a difference. Then, at a local ASQ meeting, she heard about the Community Good Works Program, which led her to a project that helped provide loans to families that were in danger of being evicted from their homes.
Watch this Quality for Life video . . .

Leading Performance Excellence From a Luxury Hotel
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company had the highest overall hotel guest satisfaction in a recent study by J.D. Power and Associates. This is not a surprise since the company is the recipient of two Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards.
Performance Excellence . . .

How to Recognize Outstanding Leadership
Do you know a leader in the quality field? If so, nominate him or her for one of ASQ’s prestigious medals. The medals are awarded every year during the World Conference on Quality and Improvement to recognize individuals for superior achievements in the development, promotion, implementation, and communication of quality information and technology. Nominations are due October 1.
ASQ medals. . .

13. ASQ Montreal Section Education Program 2012-2013

By David Tozer, Ph.D., ASQ CQE and SSBB, Education & Audit Chair


Having ASQ certification gives you an edge in the market and can significantly increase your income.

ASQ Certification often leads to higher paying employment.  The money invested in education and certification increases chances of finding employment quickly in the down sizing environment we live in.  People who take the section sponsored refresher courses, and spend at least twice as much time as spent in the classroom on self study, have an 80%, or better, chance of passing the examination on the first attempt.

Certified Quality Engineer Topics include: quality concepts, cost of quality, human resources, team formation and group dynamics, inspection, metrology, sampling, reliability, quality standards, quality audit, statistics, design of experiments, process improvement, liability, and modern management methods for improving quality.

Certified Six Sigma Black Belt Topics include: quality concepts, cost of quality, enterprise wide deployment, business process management, project management, team formation and group dynamics, define, measure, analyze, improve, control, lean enterprise, statistics, design of experiments, and design for six sigma.

Certified Six Sigma Green Belt Topics include: quality concepts, cost of quality, enterprise wide deployment, business process management, project management, team formation and group dynamics, define, measure, analyze, improve, control, and statistics.

Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence Topics include: quality concepts, quality planning, customer focus, quality standards, project management, cost of quality, team formation and group dynamics, human resources and improvement.


Certified Quality Auditor Topics include: quality concepts, team formation and group dynamics, management responsibility, audit objectives, audit preparation, audit conduct, audit reporting, sampling, and basic statistics.

Certified Quality Inspector Topics include: quality concepts, team formation and group dynamics, geometry, metrology, reading drawings, mechanical processes, statistical process control, inspection, and sampling.

Calendar and Registration Form

Questions? In house courses, etc.: David Tozer:  (514) 694-2830, davidtozer@qualitiqua.com

14. Executive Committee Meetings & Officers

Section Executive Committee (Leadership Team) Meetings are held at different locations, starting at 6 PM. The next regular meeting is tentatively scheduled for :

October 3, 2012

Consult the List of Your Executive for 2012-13 here

Note that all dates planned are subject to change.  Please call ahead to attend by contacting the Section Chair or the Section Secretary.

Note: Available on request for section members only are minutes of section executive meetings (contact the Secretary) and section operating budget information (contact the Treasurer).

15. Upgrade Your Membership to Senior Member

GAIN RECOGNITION . . . ADVANCE TO SENIOR MEMBER

Why not demonstrate your professional growth and accomplishments in the quality profession by becoming an ASQ Senior Member. You will receive recognition from ASQ, additional benefits, and the opportunity of being nominated to the grade of Fellow Member, if you qualify. Go onto your profile at www.asq.org to complete the application on-line. You can also download the application from www.asq.org. Or you may phone 1-800-248-1946 and request that an application be mailed to you. Apply today either by phone or on-line and get the recognition and benefits you deserve.

16. Unemployed Member Dues

Unemployed ASQ members receive a discount on their membership dues based on consecutive years of membership.

Consecutive Years of Membership Dues Discount
1-4 50%
5 or more 100%

Eligibility Criteria

  • You must be a Full, Senior, or Fellow member.
  • Any years as a Forum, Associate, or enrolled student do not qualify.
  • You may submit this application only after being unemployed for at least 90 days.
  • You must be actively seeking employment.
  • Retired or self-employed members are not eligible. ASQ offers a similar benefit for retired members.

Benefits

  • Your basic membership dues for the current membership year will be paid or partially paid by ASQ. Basic membership dues exclude
    additional Forums and Divisions, journals, and additional Sections (Seniors and Fellows—you keep your extra benefit of choice).
  • You may participate in the program for no more than two years in your membership lifetime. You must complete an application for the second
    year of participation.
  • After renewing your membership, please visit Careers in Quality to search for jobs, apply for positions online, and post your resume for employers to view.

NOTE: The following links require that you be logged into your account before you try to activate them.

Download the 2011/2012 Unemployment Program Application (July 2012–June 2013 Membership Groups) (DOC, 101 KB)

NOTE: The information related to this benefit was correct at the time this Newsletter was issued.  But as the ASQ has the right to revise its benefits, please contact the ASQ for the latest information on this benefit.  It may be revised or discontinued at any time.



17. Feedback

Please send us your comments about the ASQ Montreal Section 0401 E-Newsletter (topics, layout, length, etc.).  Do you want to contribute an article (English or French) or a good idea?  Contact us by e-mail.

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Contact Michael Bournazian for more information


Pass it on

We invite you to forward this Newsletter to friends and colleagues who may be interested.

The ASQ Montreal Section 0401 Newsletter is prepared by and published for its members.
Section web site: www.asqmontreal.qc.ca
Newsletter Editor: Michael Bournazian, Eng.
The opinions expressed in the Newsletter are those of the authors, not those of ASQ. Articles may be reproduced if the source is stated
If you are an ASQ Montreal Section member and wish to receive this Newsletter by e-mail, please go to www.asq.org and revise your profile to add mailings from your section.

How to Opt Out.

This e-mail is being sent in the course of normal Montreal Section  business to the e-mail address of record. We are not responsible for forwarded e-mails. If you no longer wish to receive e-mail communications from the Montreal Section (your section) of ASQ, please visit your ASQ account to unsubscribe or reply to this message, indicating Opt Out in the e-mail body and in the title.

Keep in mind that by doing this you will no longer receive ANY correspondence from your section. If you are concerned about too many emails, ASQ has suggested limitations about how many e-mails may be sent to the section members each month. This does not extend to career notifications.