John Szarka, Section Chair
The Quality and Productivity Section finished a strong year, wrapping up executive committee meetings in December. The tactical plan was set for 2026 with the following three focus areas:
- Strengthening student and early-career membership
- Increasing the visibility and outreach to our members
- Improving processes for running the section
Each area contains specific actions to provide more member value, in alignment with points of emphasis from broader ASA leadership at this year’s Council of Sections meetings at the Joint Statistical Meetings. A group of newer and experienced officers across industry, academia, and government will execute this plan in 2026 and provide different perspectives.
Overall, the section had several accomplishments in 2025. Its flagship conference, the Quality and Productivity Research Conference, was successful in June at the University of Washington, operating at a profit in a challenging environment of uncertainties. The Fall Technical Conference, the section’s jointly sponsored conference with the Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences and two sections of the American Society for Quality, was also a success in Houston, Texas, in October.
At last year’s JSM in Nashville, Tennessee, Q&P had a strong invited session, Modern Process Monitoring, while also co-sponsoring an additional invited session, In Praise of Modern Statistical and Machine Learning Methods for Digital Engineering. Q&P also sponsored two topic-contributed paper sessions, one contributed papers session, and a contributed poster session. Additionally, the section co-sponsored six topic-contributed sessions, including the SPES and Q&P student paper aware and Natrella scholarships.
Two of the section’s members (Jennifer Van Mullekom and Brian Weaver) were named ASA Fellows for 2025, as well.
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