As the end our Section’s current fiscal year nears and I complete my first year as Chair of the Hartford Section, I would like to thank the entire Executive Committee for their hard work and effort this year. What a year it has been, going through several changes both planned and unplanned.
Your Executive Committee is already working on next year’s monthly meeting speakers offering, which will bring added value to all of our members. Member Value is a measure that ASQ uses to determine how our members view our section. Starting next fiscal year, during the months of January and February, some members in each and every section will be asked to fill out a survey rating their section. This survey will be used to determine the QMP score of that section. Quality Management Plan or QMP will be replacing the old Section Management Plan or SMP. I was honored to accept on behalf of the Hartford Section, both the SMP Total Quality Award and the Silver Excellence Award. This year there were a total of 91 sections that received the Total Quality level and for Section Excellence the break down goes 20 Bronze, 30 Silver and 34 Gold level excellence awards. Your Executive Committee is open to any and all suggestions on what we can do to bring higher membership value to all of our section members.
We still have open positions on our Executive Committee that need to be filled. Please consider joining the team to help us achieve Gold level excellence. Please let us know your interests and we will find a match for you on the Hartford Section Executive Committee team.
I was able to bring back to the Hartford Section some of the new initiatives of ASQ from my trip to Houston to attend the ASQ World Conference on Quality and Improvement. Two of these are:
Woman in Quality Network - currently featured on our website, and Minorities in Quality – to roll out soon.
Also under development is a new training program for Certificate attainment. This will combine Division subject matter experts with local or national training instructors, all under the direction of the new ASQ Chief Learning Officer. This will standardize what instructors are teaching and how they are teaching the Body of Knowledge or BoK. These instructors will be qualified by Headquarters and the respected Divisions responsible for maintaining the BoK. There are more pieces in this new program that will be rolled out in the near future. This will effect how the sections handle the nationally branded programs and certificates.  Stay tuned as we “Make Good, Great”.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our hosts at Yarde Metals for all of their effort on our yearly plant tour. Bruce Hecklinger and his team did a great job showing off what makes Yarde Metals a unique working environment and one that needs to be copied for its best practices...
               I also would like to point out an up coming event that most certainly rivals the ASQ World Conference on Quality and Improvement. That is the North East Quality Council’s 60th Anniversary Conference on October 14th and 15th, in Marlborough Massachusetts. We have a link on our website that goes to NEQC’s site where you can get all the information on this event. Hartford Section kicked off the 60th anniversary celebration of NEQC at Adam’s Mill on January 22nd of this year. I invite all our members to take advantage of the early bird sign up opportunity as you can save as much as 35%. The first featured keynote speaker is our friend Forrest W. Breyfogle III. Forrest was in Hartford last September to show us how to balance our Six Sigma scorecards.  Please check out the other feature keynote speakers on the NEQC website. 
Also for our current Member Leaders, or those of you who would like to join our Executive Committee, there is an NEQC sponsored training event on June 13th, this is a no charge event. The RU’s for this event are 0.8. If you are interested in joining this event please go to www.neqc.org and click register.
              Thank you for a successful year and see you on June 11th for our last meeting for this fiscal year.

Bob Dembkoski ASQ-CQA, CQIA
ASQ Hartford Section Chair 2008/2009