About Duke

As the owner/operator of APLOMET Duke operated as a quality engineer, quality manager, and knowledge architect specializing in quality management.  He was formerly a quality professional in TRW’s automotive sector.

Duke holds undergraduate degrees in technology and business, a masters in adult education, and completed doctoral coursework in applied management and decision sciences. He served as an adjunct university faculty member teaching statistics and management research. He is also a graduate of the international program in the Gestalt approach to organization and system development.

During his career he has held certifications as an electronics technician (ICET), quality technician, quality engineer, quality auditor and quality manager (ASQ) and management consultant (IMC).  In 1998 he was elected Fellow of the American Society for Quality.  He taught review courses for ASQ’s CMQ/OE, CQA, CQT and CQIA certifications, and was a national instructor for ASQ for two decades.

He is the author of three books, Root Cause Analysis: The Core of Problem Solving and Corrective Action (2nd ed.), Performance Metrics: The Levers for Process Management, and Musings on Internal Quality Audits: Having a Greater Impact, and was co-editor of The Certified Quality Manager Handbook (2nd ed.). He has been published in Quality Progress, Quality Magazine, Quality World, Business Improvement Journal, APICS-The Performance Advantage, Manufacturing Engineering, The Auditor, and Quality Management Forum.

He served an adjunct professor teaching statistical quality control at a state university, and statistics and research methods at a private liberal arts college.  He is a frequent speaker for professional and trade audiences at the local, regional, national and international levels. He served as a examiner for the Tennessee Performance Excellence award as well as a volunteer SCORE counselor to small business.

Duke’s LinkedIn Profile

See a video of Duke in action as well as some client testimonials.

Duke in the news:

Anniversary of 26/11 Mumbia India

Alumni Award

Book signing at 2010 ASQ World Conference

Interview on Quality, Reliability and Organizational Change

A podcast on Root Cause Analysis

 

Musings: My Blog

My Fiction Books of the Year

I've shifted more of my time to reading fiction this year.  Here are my Top 3 Recommendations: Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson Burn-In, by Peter Singer and August Cole Borrowed Time, by John Nolte

Baldrige Award Changes

The program was put on hiatus for a year or so in order to do a review.  Information regarding the future is summarized in this post. Key issues/changes include: Recognize role models of resilience and long term success The evaluation process will focus more on...

Improving Visual Inspection

I recently attended a great webinar by a guru on Visual Inspection.  Here's the video And here's a link to his book on the topic.

Free Book on Performance Metrics

My 2013 book on Performance Metrics sold well for a while, but the publisher decided to put it out to pasture last year. So I'm making the PDF version available for free.  Just download it here.

Update to Pascal’s Quote

Blaise Pascal's (1623-1662) famous quote: “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” We need to add, "without a TV, computer or smartphone." It's amazing what the mind can do when it has time to work alone, without all the...

More from ChatGPT

Yes, it can be erroneous at times, but to fear it or not use it for what it's good at makes absolutely no sense.  I asked it what an organization might do if they're having "line clearance" errors, and here's what it said: Line clearance is an important process in...

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