I spent part of last week working the InfinityQS booth at the 2011 ASQ World Conference on Quality and Improvement. I won’t go into the booth stories here, but I would like to share a few interesting things about the show. Well, they were interesting to me so I hope you find them as such!
The ASQ Conference was held May 16-18 in Pittsburgh, PA. The conference had its usual mix of excellent speakers and top notch quality improvement material. InfinityQS has attended every year for the past 10+ years, and it's been interesting to see how the event has evolved along with the innovations that have been made in the quality arena-- both from a process and technology standpoint.
As a part of ASQ’s commitment to social responsibility, a build-a-bike event was held for the Pittsburgh area Boys and Girls Clubs. Conference attendees were invited to assist a certified bicycle mechanic assemble bicycles for the Boys and Girls Clubs. There were fifty bicycles donated during the event. Each bicycle was delivered with a book, Claire Ann and the Talking Hat, by Barbara A. Cleary. The book uses a bird and mouse to explain quality and learning tools to Claire and her friends. So not only is ASQ presenting the children with a great bicycle, they are also introducing them to the process of using quality tools and helping enforce good learning habits. This is a great program for allowing ASQ and its members to give back a little while promoting quality at the same time.
On the quality side of the conference, there were the typical ASQ high quality (pun intended) presentations. Considering the scale of this conference and the number of sessions presented, this conference requires expert organization and planning. One key example of the organization of the conference is the way that the sessions themselves are organized. The sessions are searchable by the level of experience, such as Basic, Intermediate, or Advanced level as well as by the focus, such as Quality Basics or Building a Quality Culture and could also be selected by special interest, as in Food, Automotive or Biomedical.
If you haven’t attended an ASQ World Conference recently I highly recommend it. With over 100 sessions available, and a great system for searching them, there is no doubt that you can find the information that you need to improve your quality system.