Acknowledgments

I want to acknowledge Candy Rogers, who converted and edited endless hours of dictation and corrected misspelled words to turn out the finished product. I couldn’t have done it without her dedication, help, and proofreading.

I also would like to acknowledge the many organizations whose senior management and boards of directors I have worked with over the past four decades who have helped to form the frameworks, concepts, ideas, and methods outlined in this book. And I would like to thank the many sponsors that helped me drive the research forward by participating in meetings, audio and video conferences, and roundtables.

In addition, I would like to thank the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and the International Academy for Quality for their unfailing support for advancing many of these concepts at the national and international level.

I would like to give special recognition to Alla Zusman, Boris Zlotin, Zion Bar-El, and Ron Fulbright, who helped me prepare the attachment on HU Diagrams. Alla and Boris provided key input in the development of this new methodology.

I would be remiss not to recognize all the inputs and constructive ideas that I received from Chuck Mignosa. He is always there to debate any subject and provide me with another point of view that helps to clarify my thinking.

I would also like to thank Frank Voehl and his Process Improvement Team at Nova Southeastern University for their insights and contributions to this book and to the Streamlined Improvement Process companion workbook that will be used to teach classes on using the SPI methodology.