Dan Dunahay

Dan Dunahay is a quality and manufacturing professional with twenty-five years of experience in multi-cultural manufacturing settings. His expertise includes process improvements and defect reduction, and utilizing SPC, DOE and Reliability techniques. Dan has his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Industrial Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, and has been a faculty member in the MSQA program since 1987. Dan has given many lectures and presentations to professional societies including the Society for Quality Control and the Society of Reliability and Safety Engineers. Dan is currently Director of Quality Systems for Newport Corporation located in Irvine, California.

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M. Falk

Falk has an Associate in Science in Metallurgical Technology from the Don Bosco Technical Institute in Rosemead, California and a Bachelor of Science in Business Management from Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. He received a Master of Science in Quality Assurance (MSQA - Manufacturing & Quality Engineering option) from California State University, Dominguez Hills in Carson, California. He is also an Associate Professor in the MSQA graduate program at CSUDH. He has been certified as a Six Sigma Master Black Belt from both the Black & Decker and Johnson & Johnson companies. He has ASQ certifications in CQM, CRE and CQE.

Falk has have over twenty years experience in managing both Quality systems, quality engineering and reliability testing personnel. He has done independent consulting in Six Sigma, advanced SPC implementation, TQM and process control initiatives for Parker-Hanifin, Boeing, Case, Fairchild, TRW, Black & Decker, Powerwave Technologies, Johnson & Johnson and the Hughes Space & Communications Company. He has implemented Six Sigma and advanced quality systems per Boeing D19000 and QS-9000.

Falk resides with his wife Ruth and their four children (3 sons and a daughter) in suburban Los Angeles, California.

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Keith Fulton

Keith Fulton holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business
Administration and a Master's Degree in Quality Assurance from California State University Dominguez Hills, as well as a Certificate in Project Management from the University of Colorado. Mr. Fulton, a long time member of the American Society of Quality, has over 25 years experience in Leadership and Customer Service including positions at Disney, Catholic Healthcare West and Deloitte Consulting.
He is currently the Manager of Quality Assurance at the Warner Bros. Studio in Hollywood California.

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Emil Hazarian

Emil Hazarian has over thirty-five years experience in Quality Assurance, Metrology, and Mechanical Engineering upper management, and in international, national and regional weights and measures organizations, national primary laboratories and leading technology industries. Since 1984 Mr. Hazarian has worked for the County of Los Angeles, AC/Weights and Measures Department. He is currently Manager of the Metrology Laboratory and is responsible for overall operation including quality assurance system, procedures, calibration, certification and accreditation of the Metrology Laboratory, covering legal metrology for Los Angeles County and scientific metrology for Southwestern USA. He also operates a private consultancy, for clients including NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratories, Boeing North America, US Department of Commerce and Southern California Edison.
He possesses international experience in engineering, legal and scientific metrology, metrology curriculum requirements, accreditation, enforcement, national and local weights and measures policies, national and international organizations structure and requirements.

In 1997, he acted as advisor/moderator for various professional groups from the People’s Republic of China. Also in 1997 he acted as US Department of Commerce Advisor in Metrology Standardization and Quality Management for Europe, Romania.

He is currently teaching metrology and quality assurance courses at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He has participated in various Professional Engineering Society technical sessions and taught Mass Measurement Techniques for Southern California Edison Co. (1994). In Romania; he taught metrology for regional metrologists (1972), mining industry and engineering metrology courses at the Technical School of Metrology (1974-1976) and taught introductory quality assurance classes for the Automation Co. in their nuclear and petrochemical activities (1981).
Mr. Hazarian received his B.S. in Electro-Energetics Engineering and his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, from Polytechnical Institute of Bucharest, Romania, 1975. He also earned a B.S. in Metrology from the Technical School of Metrology, Bucharest, Romania, 1967 and an M.S. in Quality Assurance from California State University, Dominguez Hills in 1992.
He is an active participant in numerous technical organizations such as the Measurement Science Conference (1988), National Conference of Standard Laboratories International (1985), Quality and Technical Lead Assessor for National Voluntary Accreditation Program (1993), International Society of Weighing and Measurement (1993), National Conference on Weights and Measures (1994), and the American Society for Quality (2003)
He is co-author of the Mass and Weight chapter, of the CRC Press Handbook of Measuring Instrumentation and Sensors, 1999, and Mechanical Variables Measurement, published in 2000, and author of a comprehensive notebook of Mass Measurement Techniques for NIST Office of Weights and Measu

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Sharon V. McFerran, PhD, RN

Currently, McFerran is a Project Manager for the Perinatal Patient Safety Project at Kaiser Permanente, implementing the Perinatal Patient Safety Project in four perinatal pilot sites for the purpose of decreasing human error, improving patient care systems, and creating high reliability perinatal units.

She has also served as project manager for the Baby Friendly Designation, and Multidisciplinary Patient Care projects for the Kaiser Hayward/Fremont Medical Center, and served on teams implementing numerous other quality programs as Kaiser facilities in Southern and Northern California, including

Prior to her work at Kaiser, McFerran worked at General Dynamics, where she established and facilitated commodity teams based on Motorola’s 6 Sigma methods, taught Statistical Process Control (SPC), and implemented the use of bar coding.

At Kaiser, she chaired many committees, including the Regional Perinatal Patient Safety Project Steering Committee, the Comparable Care Committee, the Patient Care Quality Service Committee, the Patient Education Committee, the Multidisciplinary Care Implementation Committee, and the Baby Friendly Committee.

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Arthur J. Plourde, PE

Mr. Plourde is a graduate of the University of Florida where he earned degrees in physics (BS 1955, MS 1960) with math minors (statistics and experimental design). He has additional graduate studies at MIT (Vibration & Shock Analysis), George Washington University (Measurement Science), and Cal Poly, Pomona (Business Management).

Early in his career he served as chief engineer of the Calibration and Measurements Laboratory and analysts for the Gulf Test Range at Eglin AFB, FL. He next served as a consultant to the Navy’s Metrology Program in the development and operation of the Navy Calibration School, designed laboratory measurement compatibility studies, assessed laboratory measurement capabilities, and formulated measurement error propagation methods. He developed the first international calibration laboratory measurement compatibility program.

Mr. Plourde has designed both parametric and non-parametric tests to analyze destructive and non-destructive precision measurement and test systems. He also has designed systems to generate environments simulating flight conditions regarding vibration, shock, trajectory and explosive impact during measurement processes.
Under his direction and technical guidance, Metron Corporation developed calibration/inspection requirements documents, instrument calibration procedures (ICP’s), standard laboratory measurement techniques, test instrument recall interval criteria, and calibration and standards laboratory audit programs.
Mr. Plourde is author and co-author of over forty measurement and process control texts. He has developed metrology training programs for nuclear power plants, aerospace and military organizations, manufactures, food and pharmaceutical processing plants, and small shops. He has been a speaker and panel member (Metrology Training and Measurement Uncertainty) at numerous metrology conferences. His early involvement in the development of automatic measuring equipment and his experimental design expertise were instrumental in his appointment to the National Academy of Science committee for the evaluation of the US ARMY automatic calibration system procurement and acceptance testing specifications and procedures.
Currently Mr. Plourde serves the metrology community as president of Metron Corporation that provides metrology training, measurement consulting services, and unique measurement instruments and calibration accessories.

 

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Robert A. Spencer

Mr. Spencer is a project specialist with AmerisourceBergen, a Fortune 50 company, where he supports information systems integration with primary strategic customers. In addition, he has 18 years graduate-level experience in the California State University, where he has taught courses in analytical skills development, inferential statistics, research design, and policy analysis. He introduced a new elective course in the MSQA program in Summer 2002 titled Understanding Customer
Requirements. Mr. Spencer holds dual masters degrees in psychology and in quality assurance and is a member of the Quality Function Deployment Institute. Mr. Spencer is currently studying graduate student customer requirements under funding through an Educational Innovation grant from
California State University, Long Beach. The purpose of this research is to use voice of the customer analysis to more fully understand the relationships between student needs, wants, and "wows" as these relate to program and curriculum development and student retention.

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Gerald (Jerry) L. VerDuft

Jerry VerDuft is a Quality Consultant in Colorado Springs, CO, currently supporting a small Integrated Circuit manufacturer in their development of ISO 9000:2000 management systems and their parts certification processes and procedures. He holds an MSQA from California State University, Dominguez Hills and a BSBA from Chapman University. He is an American Society for Quality (ASQ) certified Quality Engineer and Quality Auditor. Jerry established the Inland Empire (CA) Section 0711 of ASQ and served as the Charter Chairman. He is retired from the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) where he served as Director of Acquisition Management and the lead person for Lean Space acquisition activities. While at SMC, he worked directly with MIT on development of a Space Sector of the Lean Aerospace initiative between industry, government, and academia. During his tenure with the Department of Defense (DOD), Jerry received the Greater Los Angeles Federal Executive Board Outstanding Accomplishment (Individual) Award for his service to the government, ASQ leadership, and his community. He also received the DOD Outstanding Career Service Award. Jerry is well versed in Lean thinking and quality improvement techniques and has provided many professional symposium talks on the subject matter.

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Jim Walden

Jim Walden is currently a project manager in the Business Excellence group within Boeing Aerospace Support in Long Beach, California. The organization is responsible for maintaining, modifying, upgrading, and modernizing aerospace products post-delivery. His professional experience includes 18 years in the quality and performance improvement disciplines at companies such as the former Beckman Industrial Corp., Hughes Aircraft Co., and the McDonnell Douglas Corp.

Walden has served as a part time instructor in the Master of Science in Quality Assurance program at California State University, Dominguez Hills since the fall term of 1997, teaching both on-ground and online courses.

Walden has a BS Degree in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a Master of Science Degree in Quality Assurance from CSUDH. He has been recognized as a Certified Quality Engineer by the American Society for Quality since 1989.

Walden served as an examiner for the California Awards for Performance Excellence in 2001 and for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 2002.

A paper that Walden recently authored, Performance Excellence - A QFD Approach, has been accepted for the upcoming special edition of the International Journal for Quality and Reliability Management, scheduled for release in early 2003.

Together with his wife, Karen, Walden lives in Huntington Beach, CA.

 

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Bill Trappen

Until his retirement in 1996, Trappen was the Director of Quality Assurance at Magnavox Electronic Systems Company, West Coast Division in Torrance, California. He now keeps busy as an independent Quality Management consultant and as a part time Professor in the Master of Science in Quality Assurance (MSQA) and Bachelor of Science in Quality Assurance (BSQA) programs at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH). He is actively involved both as a member of the Advisory Boards and as an adjunct professor.

Trappen has a BS Degree in Electrical Engineering from Oregon State University, an award in Manufacturing Operations and Production Management from UCLA, and a Master of Science Degree in Quality Assurance (MSQA) from (CSUDH). He is a Registered Professional Quality Engineer in the State of California.

Trappen is a Fellow of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), past chairman of the L.A. Section (1987-1988) and past chairman of the Electronics Division (1992-93-94). He is a certified Quality Manager, a certified Quality Engineer, a certified Reliability Engineer, a certified Quality Auditor, and a Fellow in the Institute for Advancement of Engineering. He has held various other leadership positions in ASQ and continues to be active in the executive boards of both the Los Angeles section and the Electronics and Communication Division.

In 1991, he received the Simon Collier Award given annually by the Los Angeles Section to ASQ members that have provided outstanding contributions to their profession. He served as chairman of the selection committee for that award in 2002. In January 2000, he was the recipient of the Electronics and Communication Division "Ralph Evans Award" for extensive services to the division, outstanding leadership in promoting the MSQA program and for years of professional endeavor. Both of the above are the highest-level recognition awarded by the section and the division.

As an active member of the National Association of Industrial Technology (NAIT), he served as Region 6 Director 1992-93, President 1993-94, and in 1994-95 as Past Chairman of the Industry Division. He was the Conference Chairman for the NAIT National Conference in Los Angeles in October 1996.

Trappen and his wife, Diane, make their home in Fallbrook, CA.

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Craig Carpenter
Craig Carpenter is currently the Director of Quality Assurance - New Product Development for Polk Audio, Inc., located in Baltimore, Maryland. Polk Audio designs and manufactures hi-end and hi-value loud speakers systems for home stereo, home theater and autosound application for consumers who appreciate the finest in audio excellence.

Carpenter has over 25 years manufacturing/quality experience in mechanical inspection, auditing, engineering and management. Past work experience includes commercial heavy fabrication, Dept of Defense sub-contracting and consumer audio products.

He has a BS Degree in Business Management from the University of Maryland/UC, a Master of Science Degree in Quality Assurance (MSQA) from CSUDH, and college certificates in Quality Management and Drafting Technology.

As a senior member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), he served on the ASQ Baltimore section executive board for 10 years. I'm a certified Quality Manager and Quality Engineer.
Hobbies include home improvements, traveling, personal enrichment and family activities. Carpenter's wife and two daughters make their home in Forest Hill, Maryland.