April Dinner Meeting: The Future of Quality Professionals

Link to meeting flyer

Date: Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Time: 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Topic:  Future of Quality Professional

Introduction: Greg Novacek, ASQ Silicon Valley Section Chair

Panel Speakers: 4 executives from bay area industry leaders  (Intuitive Surgical, Lam Research, Facebook)

Location: Newark Hilton, 39900 Balentine Drive, Newark, California 94560 (shuttle from Fremont BART will be available, BART is 4 miles from hotel)

Meeting agenda:

• 5:00 - 5:30 - Check In & Registration
• 5:30 - 6:00 - Network
• 6:00 - 6:45 - Dinner
• 6:45 - 6:00 - Introduction - Greg Novacek
• 7:00 - 8:25 - Panel presentations and discusion
• 8:25 - 8:30 - Raffle, Adjourn and questions for section leaders

ASQ Bay Area Sections want to see you at this joint meeting.  Be there!

Topic Overview

The economy has forced changes in US industry.  Some the changes include restructuring, layoff, outsourcing or companies going out business.  ASQ is a society of quality professionals.  Quality is always hard hit by changes.  We can be sure this will continue.  The meeting topic will explore what executives with industry leading companies expect in the future.  We can be sure it will be different than the past.

Panel members will include:

John Dovala - John is Director of Supplier Quality and IQC at Intuitive Surgical.  John has recently taken this position and is in process of organizational changes.  John has management experience in product development as Director of Hardware Design at Acuson and Director of EE at Hansen Medical (robotics company). John is an Electrical Engineer by training and has an MBA. John's view is that everyone at a company must have Quality as a top concern...all the time. He also believes companies will need subject matter experts in quality because it is a science and engineering discipline.  Intuitive Surgical is the global leader in the rapidly emerging field of robotic-assisted minimally invasive surgery.

Chris Chang - Chris is Director of Supplier Materials and Technology at Lam Research.  Chris has been with Lam Research for 14 years.  He started in design engineering and has used the experience in the transition to the technology management for Lam Research supply chain.  Chris can share how quality is not a stand-alone function making the typical quality professionals obsolete.  Lam Research is major supplier of wafer fabrication equipment and services to the worldwide semiconductor industry for nearly 30 years.  Lam is a As the market leader in plasma etch and a leading supplier of single-wafer clean products, Lam Research strives to consistently deliver the technical capability and cost-effective performance our customers require.

Goranka Bjedov - works as a Capacity Planning Engineer at Facebook. Her main interests include performance, capacity and reliability analysis, testing and planning. Prior to joining Facebook, she spent five years doing performance testing for Google. Her career also includes senior engineer and manager positions at Network Appliance and AT&T Labs, respectively. Before joining the industry, she was an Associate Professor in the Purdue University School of Engineering. A speaker at numerous testing and performance conferences, Goranka has authored many papers and presentations and two textbooks.  Goranka will be Keynote speaker at Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference in October 2011