Duke Okes is a knowledge architect at Aplomet (Blountville, TN). He has been a member of ASQ since 1978, and has served in leadership roles with his local section in Tennessee as well as the Quality Management Division. He is an ASQ Fellow and holds several certifications. For more information, call (423) 323-7576, e-mail dokes@earthlink.net or visit aplomet.com.
Quality is not a single field, but in fact the integration of knowledge from many fields of science, technology and management. This can be seen by looking at some of the quality gurus and their more well-known contributions.
Organizations are under constant pressure. When product failure rates are significantly reduced, customer expectations rise. More complex supply chains reduce costs but introduce new risks. Technology reduces dependence on people, but corrective actions find the cause of problems to be human error and the solution to be retraining for approximately 60% of problems.
