For Immediate Release

Product Safety, Environmental Management, and Lean Six Sigma

ASQ World Conference Offers Spectrum of Cross-Industry Speakers, Sessions

Milwaukee, Wis., December 14, 2007— It’s a fact. Quality professionals need to continually improve and emerge as leaders in their respective industries.  One way to gain a competitive edge is through ongoing professional development.  The American Society for Quality’s (ASQ) 2008 World Conference on Quality and Improvement, May 5-7, 2008, Houston, Texas, provides a myriad of improvement opportunities.  More than 90 breakout sessions are planned ranging from topics on business excellence, knowledge transfer, generational diversity, virtual universes and innovation application. Also on tap are featured speakers – Patrick Townsend, Glenn Walters and Michael Stanleigh.

Sessions Will Cover Today’s Hot Topics

Many of the 2008 sessions were designed to address this year’s most important quality topics.

A snapshot of sessions include:

• The Cost of Less Than Perfect
• Driving Excellence Through Corporate Culture
• Buzzwords or a New Reality for Quality Leaders?
• Building Virtual, Global Work Teams
• Applying Lean Six Sigma to Environmental Management
• Product Safety, Warnings and Recalls
• Strategy Deployment for Optimizing Lean Six Sigma

To see the entire conference schedule, visit the conference Web site.

Featured Speakers Offer Unique Quality Perspective
Patrick Townsend – Monday, May 5, 12:30 - 1:30 p.m.

Pat Townsend not only writes and talks about “this quality stuff,” he has done it.  He has twice led the definition, implementation and maintenance of quality and leadership efforts.  These efforts have not only been successful, they have also included 100% employee involvement. Townsend brings original ideas to the discussion from the idea that leadership is a subset of love to the methodology for a rapidly evolving Complete Quality Process (CQP) that involves every person on the payroll in the improvement of everything the organization does, using every available tool.

Michael Stanleigh – Monday, May 5, 3:00 - 4:00 p.m.

Michael Stanleigh is considered to be one of the leading experts in linking the fields of strategy, quality and innovation. He delivers his research-based, humorous and enjoyable presentations around the world on the topics of strategic project and quality leadership as well as Innovation.  Stanleigh holds various leadership and board positions including director of project and quality management at SheridanCorporate’s Innovation Centre and faculty member at Memorial University.

Glenn Walters – Wednesday, May 7, 11:00 a.m. - noon

Glenn Walters is a proven champion for performance excellence who uses a combination of facts, stories, humor and magic to engage and stimulate his audiences.  Walters has practiced, taught and consulted on quality, management and leadership issues for more than 30 years.  Much of his current work is centered on workplace engagement and productivity and how fun in the workplace is essential for sustained organizational performance excellence.

About ASQ

The American Society for Quality, www.asq.org, has been the world’s leading authority on quality for more than 60 years.  With more than 93,000 individual and organizational members, the professional association advances learning, quality improvement and knowledge exchange to improve business results, and to create better workplaces and communities worldwide.  As champion of the quality movement, ASQ offers technologies, concepts, tools and training to quality professionals, quality practitioners and everyday consumers, encouraging all to Make Good Great®.  ASQ has been the sole administrator of the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award since 1991. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wis., ASQ is a founding partner of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), a prominent quarterly economic indicator, and also produces the Quarterly Quality Report.