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
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
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
Book signing at 2010 ASQ World Conference
Interview on Quality, Reliability and Organizational Change
A podcast on Root Cause Analysis
Musings: My Blog
How Happy are Your Employees to Come to Work?
Ever seen a dog at work? For example, I was watching one searching bags for drugs in an airport. They are totally committed and love it. Question: How many people are that happy at their work? What does it say about mission, culture, etc?
Quality Entertainment
Given the COVID shutdowns I've not traveled any this year, and the time at home gave wife and me the opportunity to binge watch some TV series we'd not seen before (and in many cases hadn't even hear of). Most involve spies, detectives, and/or science fiction, Here's...
Qualitative vs. Quantitative Risk Assessment
For some time I (and many others) have been writing and speaking on how common widely used risk assessment methods actually introduce risk rather than help reduce it. Here's a great talk by Doug Hubbard on the topic:...
Irrationality
First let me state that I am not a medical professional, and have not read all the studies that have been done on whether or not HCQ (+ zinc and azithromycin) are effective in treating COVID. In the limited info I have read I believe it's unlikely to be effective...
Really Bad Comparison!
You may know that I teach and write on Performance Metrics, and get really frustrated when I see someone use them badly. Here's an example from an article in The Japan Times about the Boeing 787 MAX: "...the FAA completed a risk analysis that found that the...
Quality Professionals and Industry 4.0
The need for quality professionals is likely to be less as Industry 4.0 comes more fully to fruition. The digitalization of everything should significantly reduce the opportunities for errors. One thing that will increase is the need for information security ... at...
Design Quality
An analysis of Industry 4.0 reveals that a lot of work, both physical and cognitive, formerly done by humans will be digitized. This means the operations aspect of those processes will be more reliable, but only if the design of the digital systems is very good....
More Risk Management Lessons (the hard way) from COVID-19
Good risk management involves monitoring leading indicators (known as KRIs, or Key Risk Indicators) that allow an organization to see that something has changed, which means the ability to respond quicker. Obviously someone was asleep at the wheel in many places,...
Copyright © 2002-2024 Aplomet.com. All Rights Reserved.