Community Information:
Welcome
ASQ Western Mass
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| Our Mission |
| The Western Massachusetts Section of the American Society for Quality (ASQ) is a group of business professionals dedicated to the advancement of quality. |
You may contact the Leadership Team at S refer to the About Us discussion.
Table of past Technical Meetings (with links to presentations)
Our Current Local Job Board
Section Leadership Team — 2024
Contact Us
Our Newsletters
Technical Meeting
Mark Your Calendars
When: Tuesday, September 10, 2024 5:30-8:00 p.m. (EST)
Where: Munich Haus, 13 Center St, Chicopee, MA 01013.
Dinner: Starts at 7 pm, $27.00 includes a full meal with 17 choices, drinks additional
Continuing Education: 0.5 CEU for attendance/participation
Registration: Please select the following link to register for the meeting or scan the QR code below
https://forms.office.com/r/Sk4NHzv6hu
Topic: Help! Our CAPA process needs a CAPA?!
Taking action to eliminate the cause of nonconformities to prevent recurrence is a requirement for several industry quality management system standards. An organization needs to define and document a corrective and preventive action process to manage their product and process nonconformities. The goal of the process is the timely implementation of systems and controls that are based on and proportionate to risk and effective at preventing occurrence and recurrence of issues. Often organizations struggle to meet the expectations of the standards and their customers when it comes to the implementation and management of an effective problem-solving system.
This presentation will describe the history and current state of the corrective action process utilized at my organization, delve into several root cause analysis tools that are useful to implement in problem solving teams, and share some lessons learned during the iterative journey to improve our corrective and preventive action process. As I’m certain everyone has some success and failure stories when it comes to this topic, please be ready to share your experiences. In the end, we can take all the help we can get when it comes to problem solving.
Presenter: Lauren Piela - ASQ member since 2009, Certifications: CQE, CMQ/OE, CSSGB-ISO 13485:2016 Lead Auditor (TPECS)-BS Chemical Engineering University of Massachusetts Amherst. Over 18 years of experience in Quality systems implementation, management, and compliance including multiple ERP system implementations. Experience with plastic films and components for industrial (ISO9001), automotive (ISO/TS16949), medical device (ISO13485; FDA 21 CFR Part820), food contact packaging (BRCGS Packaging) and with metal processing for firearms (ISO9001) and aerospace (AS9100) industries. Held positions as a quality and manufacturing engineer, supplier quality engineer, validations manager, quality manager, quality compliance manager, and quality director. Currently working as a Director of Quality at Dymotek.
Call For nominations From General Membership (Chair-Elect, Secretary, or Treasurer) If you are interested, please follow the link.
Below is the link to the presentation at our April 9, 2024, Dinner meeting -ASQ Western Mass Section: Effective Internal Auditing Techniques.
2023 Western Mass ASQ Annual Report
Overall, 2023 was a pretty good year. We were able to manage the change in our website and are still learning new things to help improve the site. The Section financial position is strong. We are managing all Section critical information on our ASQ SharePoint site. We won the Silver Performance Excellence award (for the 2nd straight year) for 2022. We have a strong leadership team for 2024. Our 2023 Annual Report is attached. We have purposely removed the balances of our accounts to maintain the confidentiality of our strong finances. If any member wants to see the details of our finances, please reach out to ASQWesternMassachusetts@ASQHQ.onmicrosoft.com.
The positives were:
· Our finances were within 2% of the budget.
· Our reserves grew by about 1%.
· We successfully completed the website upgrade to the new MyASQ with NO disruption of service.
· The Section has made about 50 postings on the new site since May.
· We successfully completed all the goals on the 2023 Business Plan.
· Andres Lopez joined our Leadership team for 2023 as our webmaster and is a great addition to the team.
The areas to improve are:
· Our membership declined by about 10%.
· We were about 2% over budget.
· We still need to recruit new members for our leadership team.
· About 15 to 20% of our membership attend technical meetings, which is good compared to other sections.
2023 Annual Report
Effective Internal Auditing Techniques- Technical Meeting April 9, 2024
This meeting will focus on how to effectively write audit reports that capture information in an objective manner, tying directly to ISO Clauses by linking internal procedures, instructions, and forms.
When: Tuesday, April 9, 2024, from 05:30 PM to 08:00 PM, 5:30 pm sign in and socialize, 6 pm event start. This is an in-person event.
Where: Munich Haus, 13 Center St, Chicopee, MA 01013.
Dinner: Starts at 7 pm, $27.00 includes a full meal with 17 choices, drinks, additional
Continuing Education: .5 CEU for attendance/participation
Registration: Please select the following link to register for the meeting, we expect this will fill up due to the subject, so please register
Speaker/Author: Fiona McAllister
More Information.
Attention all aerospace members:
A GUIDE TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Industry 4.0, digital transformation, and model-based definition (MBD) will impact small and medium manufacturing operations across Connecticut, especially in the aerospace and defense sector. Do you know what MBD will mean to your business and what you need to do to implement it?
Please join the CT Model Based Definition team for a complimentary breakfast and a presentation about MBD and the opportunities this can mean for your organization. For more details, select the link.
Below is the link to the presentation that was given at our February 27th, 2024 Dinner meeting -ASQ Western Mass Section Trivia Challenge… All things Quality!
Below is the link to the presentation that was given at our November 14th 2023 Dinner meeting
Improving the Effectiveness of Visual Inspection
Interested in getting certified as a: CQE , CQT, CQA, CSQP, or CMQ/E. Please see the attached for details on classes to help you prepare for the exams. Virtual classes start in April 2024.
ASQ Hartford 2024 Spring Courses