GENERATION NEXT
FROM CLASSROOM TO BOARDROOM, ONE DEDICATED PROFESSIONAL IS CHANGING PERSPECTIVES ON QUALITY OF STUDENTS AND COMMUNITIES.
Veronica Gonzalez-Bosch
Product Design and Innovation Center, Marketing Strategy Coordinator
Monterrey Institute of Technology (ITESM)—Mathematics Department, Total Quality Management (TQM) Professor
ASQ member since 2000
"At the Product Design and Innovation Center, I am responsible for the marketing and customer service strategy of the executive programs we offer to the industry. I am responsible for evaluating the quality performance of the executive programs and upgrading them to meet customer requirements. I am also responsible for managing customer relationships and discovering new business opportunities.
"As a professor, I am responsible for introducing undergraduate students to TQM. Using real facts, I show my students how quality works and explain how it can be used in their professional and personal lives.
"After graduating from ITESM, I planned to earn a master’s degree in marketing. But then I discovered the school offered a master’s degree in science that focused on quality management. At that time, I was working at ITESM’s Manufacturing Center, and I was surrounded by engineers, so I decided to expand my horizons and enroll in the quality systems master’s degree program.
"The program was hard because I was not familiar with statistics and processes. (Prior to working at ITESM, I worked for an advertising agency—a very different world.) But several good things occurred: I discovered quality and manufacturing in a practical way, and I found out marketing people should be taught how engineering, design, and manufacturing people approach problems because marketing is a link between the customers and the manufacturing team. Understanding both sides is necessary to fulfill customer requirements and shows interest and respect for both quality and marketing.
"At the Product Design and Innovation Center, quality tools help us make decisions based on facts and data and preserve knowledge through the standardization of best practices. For example, we have a control chart that helps us decide whether to increase or decrease our advertising efforts based on the number of participants registered for previous events. Our critical procedures for the executive programs are documented in checklists based on previous lessons learned from successful experiences and customer complaints. We also use quality function deployment (QFD) to translate the voice of the customer into customer needs, which are assessed and weighted on a continuous basis to determine where we should focus our resources and improvement efforts. All of this has helped us achieve one of the most successful executive programs offered at ITESM.
"As a professor, the use of QFD has helped me design my syllabi so it focuses on my customers, which are both students and the community. This allowed me to become one of the highest evaluated teachers in the department during the fall 2003 semester.
"I strongly believe quality can significantly contribute to Latin American development. With an enthusiastic group of professors, researchers, and industry leaders, I founded the Latin American QFD Association (www.qfdlat.com) and the Six Sigma Mexican Society (www.socsigmamex.com). This year, the Six Sigma Mexican Society held its first Six Sigma Project Award. More than 150 participants attended the program and 11 projects were presented by different Mexican enterprises. The Latin American QFD Association held its first Latin American Symposium during 2003. More than 120 participants attended this symposium and the association has been asked by the International QFD Council to host the 10th International QFD Symposium in Monterrey, Mexico, this year.
"When you are focused on quality, you become a more demanding customer. No matter where you go, you expect to receive value. It doesn’t matter whether I’m in a restaurant, on an airplane, or at a movie, I will complain if it is necessary, and I usually get what I am entitled to. Sometimes people forget the only way they are going to be heard is to voice their concern. Complaining is even one way to train others in quality. You do not have to shout or be rude, you just have to politely tell the service provider what is wrong, and you will be amazed at the results.
"ASQ has assisted me by being a source of knowledge. I have been able to learn about different quality points of view and see how quality tools are used in different projects and circumstances. ASQ is a virtual quality lab where I can find knowledge and suit it to my personal and professional interests. ASQ has also become a point of reference for my students’ development. Each semester, I ask them to read at least three articles from Quality Progress magazine to keep them up to date on quality cases and research.
"Quality thinking has helped me change the way I make decisions. It has showed me the importance of facts and data over assumptions.
"In 2001, my husband and I prepared a paper combining failure mode and effects analysis, problem-solving analysis, and QFD for developing a complaint management system and presented it to the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE). Personally, this was a great accomplishment as it allowed me to share my quality ideas with different cultures. Quality is a universal language every culture understands and respects and is constantly challenged to obtain.
"As a professor, I feel enthusiasm and pride when my students change their perspectives and come to better understand quality. Sharing quality with younger generations is a legacy for future generations and a small contribution toward making our world a better place to live."
