Thousands of Quality industry professional gathered to launch The Quality Show back in late October in Rosemont, IL.  The exhibit hall floor had 135 exhibiting companies, occupying nearly 30,000 net square feet and 2,500 attendees.  The exhibitors responded enthusiastically about their experience at the new trade show with 75% of the 2015 exhibitors already renewed for the 2017 Show.

During the event, two keynote speakers shared their insights on the current and future state of quality within U.S. manufacturing.  Bryce Currie, Senior Executive Global Quality, Compliance and Lean Operations, GE Aviation, delivered the opening day keynote address.  Currie provided details on what GE Aviation is doing to drive strategy, culture and continuous improvement in over 80 manufacturing sites worldwide. He said, “Every 2 seconds, an aircraft with GE engine technology takes off.” Clearly, quality is not something to be overlooked when so many people depend on this technology.” He described techniques such as bus tours for plants to share ideas and best practices, with executives getting on a luxury bus to see what their colleagues were doing across various locations.

Scott Darpel, Chief Safety Officer, Reliability and Quality Division, NASA GRC, spoke on Wednesday morning.  Darpel discussed the importance of understanding risk and how to improve decision making.

Both presentations were well attended and well received by the attendees.   During the opening day keynote, Quality Magazine presented their Professional of the Year award to T.M. Kubiak, Performance Improvement Solutions and the Plant of the Year Award to Clinkenbeard, an M2M Company.

Attendees had the opportunity to hear from subject matter experts in 18 educational sessions led by the American Society for Quality (ASQ), the Coordinate Metrology Society (CMS). Three of the sessions were broadcast live and will be available through the end of January. To register for free and listen to these sessions interested parties can visit www.qualityshow.com/broadcastlive. The education program was presented by CMS, ASQ, Oxford Instruments, InfinityQS, ZEISS, Mitutoyo, Tinius Olsen, Starrett Company, Performance Improvement Solutions and Clinkenbeard.

Grace Duffy, Quality’s 2014 Professional of the Year, was on hand with a presentation on Modular Kaizen, and also signing her book of the same name.

Tom Kubiak, our 2015 Professional of the Year, described “Implementing Lean Six Sigma in the Absence of Common Sense.” Along with taking aim at some nonsensical senior executive ideas, he suggested areas for companies to improve.

And Karen Spencer of Clinkenbeard walked attendees through their journey to Quality Plant of the Year and invited the audience to apply for the award next year. Along with attendees and exhibitors, several cars came to the Quality Show on the show floor, demonstrating the importance of Quality for both race cars and Smart cars.

Throughout the show floor, 135 of the industry’s premier suppliers demonstrated the latest products, services and techniques to improve business. Exhibitors included Gold Sponsor Quality Vision International (QVI), Bronze Sponsor InnovMetric, as well as Advanced Industrial Measurement Systems, Diatest USA, FARO Technologies, Jenoptik, Keyence Corporation of America, Metrologic Group Services, Inc., Quality Calibration Service, Hexagon Metrology, AMETEK Inc, Winslow Engineering, and many more. 

The Quality Show will be held every other year. The 2017 event will be held Tuesday, October 24 - Thursday, October 26 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL. For more information, visit www.qualityshow.com.