Yoshio Kondo, Ph.D., a quality management leader who stressed the interrelationship between quality and people, died April 1, 2011, at the age of 87.

According to professor Samuel Ho and Christopher Fung, Ph.D., authors of the TQM

Forty or 50 years ago, when you sat down in front of, or picked up, a dimensional measurement tool, you immediately recognized that a certain amount of knowledge and skill was required to use it. The measurement operation was almost always completely manual, and even reading and interpreting the readings was an acquired skill. In addition, it was largely understood that precise measurements needed to be taken in a controlled environment on a stable surface. A skilled measurement specialist was half engineer, half craftsman (or half Houdini).

President Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2011, which begins in October, includes funds to keep the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program (BPEP) ticking over, after a fashion, for another year. The $7.7 million currently on the table is less than the $9.9 million he requested and $1.9 million less than last year’s appropriations. This leaves the BPEP in the increasingly prevalent quandary of taking care of business with a tightened belt.

For most of us, food safety is a topic that, at best, only lurks at the edges of our brains. It rarely becomes something we really think about until we open up our refrigerator and try to figure out what’s growing in the back corner of the bottom shelf, or until we hear stories about people being poisoned by leafy green vegetables or bad eggs bought at the local supermarket.