Chris Gotwalt, Q&P Chair

Here, at the end of 2020, it is almost trite to point out what an eventful year this had been. Crises like COVID-19 are a major shock to our institutions. Though they can carry a heavy dose of loss and tragedy, crises also afford us the opportunity to identify what we really value, what we should preserve, and what we should change. For Q&P, 2020 has had important and positive developments, and I believe we enter 2021 a stronger and healthier section.

The biggest news is we are planning to transition primary sponsorship for the Fall Technical Conference (FTC) from ASQ to the ASA via Q&P. The contract, which would start in 2022, has not been written or signed yet, but the FTC Steering Committee and Q&P Executive Committee are on board and a plan for operational aspects of the transition is in place. Once this is complete, Q&P will go from primary sponsorship of one conference—the Quality and Productivity Research Conference (QPRC)—to two. FTC is an outstanding conference with a rich tradition extending over 60 years that we enthusiastically look forward to supporting in the future. For Q&P, taking this on amounts to the largest expansion of the responsibilities of the section in many years.

Q&P treasurer, Sharad Prabhu, will map the financial processes of FTC into a framework as consistent as possible with those of QPRC. This will make managing the accounts of two conferences less burdensome and Byzantine for Q&P treasurers in the future.

The Q&P Executive Committee has adapted and modernized its meetings, which are now online. We found our ability to meet and make decisions is easier and more agile this way. We have chosen to continue this practice moving forward, rather than having in-person meetings at QPRC, JSM, and FTC.

Having executive committee meetings live over the web will serve us well because it removes the need for travel and facilitates more flexible scheduling, making participation accessible for a more diverse population of interested volunteers.

At the end of last year, as I transitioned into my role as chair, the Q&P Executive Committee had unexpected challenges that required us to obtain ASA approval for several people to stay on beyond their usual terms. This gave me the luxury of an experienced team. Dave Collins stayed on as Q&P secretary until we found his successor, Annie Zangi. Additionally, Shan Ba stayed on as program chair and Brian Weaver stayed on as past chair. I look forward to working with Brian in 2021 as we update the Q&P operating manual, which essentially describes the operating procedures from the late 20th century and is critically in need of an update.

At the beginning of 2020, Brian and I assessed that Q&P was doing many individual things well—conferences, journals, mentoring and scholarship programs—as well as having awards recognizing outstanding contributions to our field. However, there were serious breakdowns of organizational continuity and connectedness in Q&P’s leadership. We have overcome much of this and I am confident there will be continuing improvements by my successor, Richard Warr. One future improvement to Q&P’s executive committee would be to diversify the set of organizations (i.e., corporations, national labs, and universities) contributing volunteers to leadership positions. We recruit and nominate those we know and trust. As we do this in the future, we need to anticipate this earlier in the year and reach farther.

The crisis of 2020 caused us all to miss out on much of what we looked forward to at the beginning of the year. Rather than list what we lost or occurred in radically changed form, it suffices to recognize that almost every aspect of our lives is completely different than it was at the beginning of March. Despite these surprises and challenges, Q&P has adapted fairly well: Our leadership team is certainly better connected than it was a year or two ago and Q&P’s portfolio of responsibilities is set to become much larger in a way that will scale and be sustainable. Overall, I think Q&P is much better positioned to thrive into the future.