Two From UA Named “Voices of Quality for the 21st Century”

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. ‚ Two Continuous Quality Improvement experts from The University of Alabama have been included in “21 voices of quality for the 21st Century” by Quality Progress magazine, a monthly publication of the American Society for Quality.

Both Dr. John Dew, director for Continuous Quality Improvement at UA, and Dr. William Woodall, Russell Professor of Statistics in the Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration, are pictured on the magazine’s January 2000 cover. The University of Alabama is the only university or organization to have two representatives on the list.

“I think Bill and I are two of the voices in a quality choir here at The University of Alabama,” Dew said. “I’m impressed by the faculty in many colleges and departments who are quality champions in business, engineering, health care, industrial areas such as textiles, education, communications, and the arts and sciences. I’m impressed by the spirit of continuous improvement that is alive all across this campus in academic and administrative areas, and among the student leaders.”

“For Dr. Dew and Dr. Woodall both to be named as voices of quality for the next century is a testament to the esteem in which they are held by their peers,” said UA President Andrew Sorensen. “In the coming years, we will see even more emphasis placed on quality, total quality management and customer satisfaction. Drs. Dew and Woodall have firmly established The University of Alabama at the forefront of this very important movement.”

The American Society for Quality is the leading organization for professionals interested in quality improvement and quality management. The organization has more than 130,000 individual members and 1,000 corporate sponsors.

Quality Progress, in announcing its “21 voices for the 21st Century,” said its purpose was to “identify and amplify 21 voices whose individual and collective statements could stimulate thinking about how quality will be applied in the 21st Century.”

The list of 21 has an international flavor, with voices from Norway, Korea, England, Canada, Ireland, Brazil, China, Indian and Portugal, as well as the United States.

Dew arrived at UA last year, after spending much of his career in Oak Ridge, Tenn., teaching quality and facilitating teams at government nuclear facilities. He is now the chair of ASQ’s Energy and Environmental Division and its Education and Training Board’s working group on distance education.

At UA he is leading the effort to develop a management system modeled on the Malcom Baldrige Award. He has created an advisory board that includes quality managers from businesses that have won the prestigious quality award.

Dew received his bachelor’s degree in sociology from Kentucky Wesleyan University, his master’s degree in history from Murray State University and his doctorate in education from the University of Tennessee.

“In the workplace, quality professionals are challenged to accelerate the use of quality tools in addressing environmental, health and safety issues. They also need to stay up to speed with the opportunities the World Wide Web provides,” Dew said.

Woodall received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Millsaps College and his master’s and doctorate in statistics from Virgina Tech. He held academic positions at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette and at Mississippi State University before joining the UA faculty.

Woodall specializes in statistical quality control, applied statistics and the study of fuzzy logic. He is widely known for the development and evaluation of statistical methods for quality control and improvement. His current research is being funded by the National Science Foundation.

He has served as a reviewer for more than 40 journals, funding agencies and universities outside the United States and has directed 13 doctoral dissertations on statistical process control. Woodall was also recently named a Fellow of the American Society for Quality and appointed as editor-elect of the Journal of Quality Technology, the society’s primary technical journal.

“There is a need to update the training materials on statistical process control to incorporate methods that can be more useful in the data-intensive environment of modern manufacturing. Also, the scope of statistical process control must be broadened to include methods for studying variation throughout the entire manufacturing process, not just at isolated points,” Woodall said.