Shewhart Medal – William Q. Meeker

The Shewhart Medal is presented to the individual who has been deemed by the committee to have made the most outstanding contribution to the science and techniques of quality control or who has demonstrated leadership in the field of modern quality control.

Shewhart Medal presented to William Q. Meeker

 “For excellence in research, applications, education, and leadership in the development of statistical ideas and methods related to reliability”

Acceptance Speech:

I am deeply grateful to have been chosen to be this year’s recipient of the ASQ Shewhart Medal. I would like to thank the Shewhart Medal committee for their hard work. It is fitting that ASQ honor this great man for the important work that he did. Walter Shewhart, as most of us know, was the father of what we now call industrial or engineering statistics.

It is often said that variability is the enemy of quality. Walter Shewhart was the first person to carefully study and then understand the nature of manufacturing process variability. Among other things, he developed control chart methods to detect what he called assignable-cause variability. He also developed the Plan, Do, Study, and Act (PDSA) cycle, also known as the “Shewhart cycle,” as a means of continuous improvement of manufacturing processes. The close resemblance between Shewhart’s cycle and the DMAIC cycle of Six Sigma has not gone unnoticed.

Walter Shewhart retired from AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1954, just as I was entering elementary school. Early in my career, from 1978 to 1992, I had the great fortune to spend my summers working at the AT&T Bell Laboratories Quality Assurance Center. This is the center that evolved from Shewhart’s organization at Bell Labs. During those years, I worked for both Blan Godfrey and Jeff Hooper, both of whom are ASQ medalists. Needless to say, I owe much of what I now know and have done during my career to those experiences.

I would also like to acknowledge Gerry Hahn and Wayne Nelson, two of my mentors, for their long-term guidance, collaboration, and friendship. Both Gerry and Wayne are now retired from General Electric Corporate Research and Development (not GE Global Research), where I was an intern while in graduate school. Interestingly, both Gerry and Wayne are former Shewhart medalists.

I have also benefited tremendously from the interactions and collaborations with my many students over the years. Among these students was Luis Escobar. Luis was my first Ph.D. student, but he quickly matured into a valued colleague, co-author, advisor, and good friend who has provided important inspiration to me over the past 25 years.

Thank you.