Retired For career I was part of the Quality and Customer Service revolution. I believe these two critical functions must be linked to continuously improve the health of a business.From the point I left college in 1986 my focus has been on the application of the vast Quality Tool-set. At times these applications were in a manufacturing setting using techniques such as Design of Experiments, Statistical Process Control and Quality Function Deployment. More recently in my career I worked in a customer service environment focused on understanding the customer’s needs and applying the Quality tools to better understand and translate these needs into a service setting.My experience includes managing and directing activities from a people, financial and program perspective.From a people perspective, I believe it is critical to include those directly involved or touching the process in the generation of ideas and solutions. They interact with the customer every day and can provide an invaluable perspective. It is very rewarding to see a change or program fully embraced by the people using it; after all they were part of the solution.From a financial perspective, it is critical that financial impact is identified for every program. After all, every program should improve the financial well being of the company. Sometimes these savings are soft, but they should always be quantified and tracked. The financial return on programs I have worked on ranges from several thousand dollars to several millions.From a program perspective, planning is important, but I believe there are two more critical tenets: flexibility and open-mindedness in solution selection. There are myriad tools that will help with solution selection; the key is to keep an open mind. Each program must also include very clear metrics. These metrics should help select the best solution and also monitor its success after implementation.Specialties: Lean & Six Sigma Tools and Techniques; application and managementQuality System Management in Medical Device IndustryCustomer Service and Medical Device Technical Support, establishement and managementProject Mangement - $6MM projects including business IT management