Instructor Profiles
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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developing methods for compliance with JCAHO and NCQA requirements;
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developing and implementing hospital-wide multidisciplinary care planning and patient/family education documentation;
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providing quality support to L&D, Mom/Baby, Pediatrics and NICU Units;
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preparing and presenting reports to the Medical Executive Committee;
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developing the Contracts Quality Oversight Report for the Hayward/Fremont Medical Center.
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writing Medical Center Annual Quality Improvement Documents: Quality Work Plan, Quality Program Evaluation, and Quality Program Description. Presented documents to Medical Executive Committee.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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