Outgoing chair, William A. Brenneman of Procter & Gamble, noted that 2016 has been an exciting year for the Quality and Productivity (Q&P) Section. Following are the highlights.

The 33rd Quality and Productivity Research Conference was held June 14–16 in Tempe, Arizona, and hosted by Arizona State University. Students Georgia Mueller-Luckey from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine and Shangjie Xu from the University of California, Riverside were awarded the Mary G. and Joseph Natrella Scholarship. Christine Anderson-Cook of Los Alamos National Laboratory was the conference honoree and gave the plenary talk. The short course “Assessing Model Uncertainty in Applied Bayesian Data Analysis” by Will Guthrie of NIST was well attended. A memorial session for Connie Borror took place Tuesday afternoon and was organized by Steven Rigdon, Doug Montgomery, Rong Pan, and Julia O’Neill. Big thanks go to Rong Pan of Arizona State University as the organizing committee chair and all the QPRC conference committee members for putting together a great conference. I also want to thank Jeff Hooper, QPRC Steering Committee chair, for his continued leadership and vision for QPRC.

The Q&P Section also offered travel grants for students to attend JSM in Chicago. This year, we awarded four $400 travel grants to Wannes G.M. Akkermans of the University of Lueven, Po-Hsu Chen of The Ohio State University, Yiqing Tian of North Carolina State University, and Cheng You of Penn State. These students were recognized at the joint Q&P/SPES mixer during JSM.

The Joint Q&P/SPES mixer in Chicago was a success as many new and longtime members of the two ASA sections came together to enjoy each other’s company for several hours. Thank you to all the donors who provided the fun door prizes and helped to make the annual joint mixer an event to look forward to every year. There was a special time for remembering two longtime members who recently passed away: Connie Borror and John Cornell.

The 60th Annual Fall Technical Conference was held October 6–7 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Lynne B. Hare of Statistical Strategies LLC gave the plenary address and was presented with the Gerald J. Hahn Q&P Achievement Award.

Finally, I would sincerely like to thank all those who served the Q&P Section this year!

As we approach 2017, I invite all those willing to serve the section in any capacity to contact Ming Li for possible volunteer opportunities.

Gerald J. Hahn Award
The Gerald J. Hahn Q&P Achievement Award is presented at the Fall Technical Conference to an individual who has demonstrated outstanding and sustained achievement and leadership in developing, promoting, and successfully improving the quality and productivity of products and organizational performance using statistical concepts and methods for 20 or more years. This award is named after the first American Statistical Association Q&P chair, Gerald (Gerry) J. Hahn, who exemplified these traits throughout his long and successful career. The award winner must have done the following:

• Delivered measurable and significant value to his/her organization, as recognized by peers and organizational leaders, in applying statistical concepts and methods to improving quality and productivity over a sustained period
• Successfully led and promoted the use of statistical concepts in methods to improve quality and productivity both within the organization and profession
• Nominations for the 2017 award are due February 24, 2017. For information about the nomination process, visit the Q&P website. For more information about the award, contact committee chair, Di Michelson.

QPRC Call for Papers
The Q&P Section is sponsoring the Quality and Productivity Research Conference (QPRC), which will take place June 13–15, 2017, in Storrs, Connecticut. The goal of the conference is to improve the quality of products and services and the productivity of industries by stimulating the research and development of better statistical methods for quality and productivity improvement. The conference emphasizes research and development of statistical methods driven by important applications and looks to identify new application areas where statistics can have a significant impact. The theme is “Quality and Statistics: A Path to Better Life.”

Abstracts can be submitted to Nalini Ravishanker or Haim Bar by March 1, 2017. Additional information can be found on the QPRC website.