Jennifer H. Van Mullekom, DuPont

Last year, my predecessor—Stephanie Dehart—encouraged you to make a New Year’s resolution regarding your involvement in SPES. I would like to build on that idea and take it a step further in 2016 by encouraging you to make SPES involvement a habit.

In his book The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg discusses the establishment of habits in the form of cue, routine, and reward. Create a cue in your calendar by scheduling a standing SPES appointment each week to peruse the ASA SPES community page, make plans to attend a conference, or network with SPES members on social media sites. I promise that establishing this 15-minute routine will yield many rewards.

Now, stop reading this article for a minute and add your recurring SPES cue to your smartphone calendar.

Great! You are back. Thanks for taking the first step in establishing your SPES habit. There are so many ways to get involved with SPES. While I hope to see you at one of our many conferences, I realize budgets and time are often tight. What are other ways you can get involved?

You can either become or sponsor a Marquardt Industrial Speaker. Contact Greg Piepel at greg.piepel@pnl.gov if you are interested in either. This program provides up to a $1,000 travel stipend for a speaker to visit a campus and provide a seminar about industrial statistics. You can also contribute to the Virtual Collaboratory on the SPES community website. Here, you can post research problems and collaboration success stories. Look for more to come about that from Byran Smucker (email smuckerb@miamioh.edu for details).

During your 15 minutes of SPES each week, look for ways SPES can help. Recently, SPES leadership was contacted about providing names for statistical reviewers for relevant government grants. We can get involved because someone was willing to act on a need. What needs do you see that SPES can address?

My involvement with standards across medical applications, material science, and protective apparel has brought to light an abundance of statistical malfeasance. When you see issues like this, think about how you can use SPES to solve problems. Could a SPES collaboration yield an easy-to-use statistical tool with an improved method that enables practitioners to make better decisions in the face of uncertainty? It has and will continue to do so if you use your network.

Virtual connections are great, but in-person connections can be even better, which brings me to our SPES-sponsored conferences. The 23rd ASA/IMS Spring Research Conference (SRC) will take place May 25–27 at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. I attended the 2015 SRC and came back with valuable ideas for the use of new methods at DuPont. This is a fantastic opportunity for statisticians and statistical practitioners to connect with academic researchers. I hope you will consider submitting an abstract and/or attending. Please peruse the website for the call for papers and conference information.

The 60th Annual ASA/ASQ Fall Technical Conference will be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 6–7. In keeping with the theme of the Twin Cities, the conference theme is “Statistics and Quality: Twin Pillars of Excellence.” The call for papers is available on the conference website.

This is a great small conference with so many opportunities for networking, fostering research collaborations, and learning new techniques. I always return form FTC energized and excited. There will be a special SPES session at the conclusion of the conference exploring various aspects of leadership, including people, project, and thought leadership. A dynamic and diverse panel pulled from inside and outside the statistics world will make it a “must-attend” professional event.

I must also mention the Joint Statistical Meetings, July 30 to August 4 in Chicago. Our program chair and program chair-elect do a great job of lining up interesting and relevant sessions and roundtables. Abstract submission for contributed posters and talks is still open and a great way to contribute to SPES. Of course, no JSM SPES itinerary would be complete without dropping in on our joint mixer with Q&P, where you can win fabulous prizes ranging from college spirit wear to software and books. Look for details about these and many more opportunities in our new virtual newsletter throughout 2016.

Finally, SPES could not be successful without our dedicated members and our elected and appointed officers. Do you want to know more about SPES? Do you see an area in which we should get involved? Do you want to be in line for an officer’s position? We are always looking for volunteers, and we welcome new ideas and initiatives. As these questions come to mind, feel free to contact me at jennifer.h.van-mullekom@dupont.com. Your newly established SPES habit is sure to yield an exciting and rewarding year!

FTC Call for Papers

Gregory Steeno, Pfizer Inc. and FTC SPES Representative

We invite you to submit papers for presentation during the 60th Fall Technical Conference, to be held October 6–7 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This year’s theme is “Statistics and Quality: Twin Pillars of Excellence.”

The Fall Technical Conference, a longtime forum for both statistics and quality professionals, is cosponsored by the American Society for Quality (Chemical and Process Industries Division and Statistics Division) and the American Statistical Association (Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences and Section on Quality and Productivity). The goal of the conference is to engage researchers and practitioners in a dialogue that leads to more effective use of statistics to improve quality and foster innovation.

If you are interested in presenting an applied or expository paper in any of the categories of statistics, quality, experimental design, or tutorial/case studies, contact a committee member, preferably by email, by downloading the call for papers at http://asq.org/conferences/fall-technical. Work should be strongly justified by application to a problem in engineering, manufacturing, Big Data, process/chemical industry, physical sciences, or a service industry. The mathematical level of the papers may range from basic to that of the Journal of Quality Technology or Technometrics. Please note which level of audience is targeted (introductory, intermediate, or advanced) so the committee can assign papers appropriately and plan a balanced program. The program committee welcomes any suggestions for special session topics or speakers.

More information can be found at the conference website.