As we move into the frenzy of the holiday shopping season, most of us will have encounters with shopping center store personnel and restaurant staff. Stores and restaurants will be filled with people looking for that perfect gift, then quickly digesting a meal to be prepared for another crazed journey searching for another perfect gift. Let’s hope that we can do so with a minimum amount of stress and confusion. In that regard, here are my tips to make that a reality:

One of my favorite movies is a dark gangster movie starring Joe Pesci entitled "8 Heads in A Duffel Bag." Pesci, a mob courier is hired to transport the heads of eight murder victims to a mafia boss to prove that the “hits” had in fact taken place. Unfortunately and comically, the duffel bag becomes mixed up with a similar bag of a college student who is off on vacation. Pesci tries to find a way to get the heads back and what follows is a series of misadventures and hilarious incidents, as the heads keep turning up in unlikely locations such as an industrial clothes dryer. Yes, I said it was dark but my kind of humor.

Recalling this movie led me to believe that what with the current state of politics and the financial downturn we are experiencing, it may be time for some additional heads to roll.

For the past 35 years or so, I have been a runner. My daily routine consists of a five-mile run followed by a seven-mile bike ride. Over the years, I have competed in numerous 10K (6.2 mile) events, 5Ks (3.1 mile), a marathon (26.2 mile), several half marathons; and for the past 21 years, I have participated in a ten-mile race in Flint, Michigan, universally known as The Crim Festival of Races. I say universally known, because it attracts runners from all over the world (7,000 runners in the most recent race), including a large contingent from Kenya. Being the altruistic member of the running community that I am, I always let the Kenyans beat me just to illustrate my hospitality. Beat me? Heck, they run each mile in just over four minutes to my 9-½ minute miles. It’s like saying, “We’ll race you, Bill, and give you a five-mile head start and still beat you.”

Several years ago, I started competing in duathlons—a two-mile run followed by 18 miles on my bike and then a five-mile run to complete the event. Evidently there aren’t too many senior citizens who can run and bike, thus I have been fortunate to win my age group on a regular basis. On the other hand, I’m one of the few senior citizens who lacks a swimming prowess so that prevents me from competing in triathlons, which is where most of the seniors compete.

I travel too much. Invariably, though, it enriches me. I typically return with some unusual experience or a new story with which to regale my colleagues. One day, while sitting in another aluminum tube with wings, I struck up a conversation with the person next to me, an engaging, interesting woman who made me laugh. I enjoyed her company and asked her name. She smiled and replied, “Lawrence.” Looking at her, I paused just long enough that she must have sensed the wheels turning in my head. “My dad wanted a boy,” she offered. “My friends call me ‘Larry.’”

I’m not sure about you, but until I boarded that aircraft, I had never met a woman named “Larry.” It was oh-so-different, unique, and incongruous.

Likewise, until recently, I considered statistical process control (SPC) and acceptance sampling to be different from one another. Their differences seemed to indicate that they were from different worlds, with different methodologies and objectives.

While those differences are clear, recent experience has shown me that these are actually complementary statistical tools. Although very different, SPC and acceptance sampling procedures can be used in concert with one another as a formidable quality improvement tool.

To illustrate how out of place he sometimes felt, comedian George Gobel once remarked, “Have you ever felt that the whole world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?” When it comes to good customer service I sometimes feel like those brown shoes. Poor service seems to find me, as though I’ve become a magnet for everything that can go awry in customer service. Let me explain.

The latest results from the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) indicate that overall service has improved slightly. This was the first gain in over a year, and the satisfaction index now stands at 75.2 percent. Claes Fornell, founder of the ACSI, says, “Households are under pressure from falling housing prices, tight credit, and rising food and fuel costs, making it more difficult for satisfied consumers to spend more even if they want to. The smart move for companies in this economic environment is to make sure they keep the customers they have by shoring up their customer relationships.”

Question: Many modern enthusiasts claim that feng shui is Chinese for the practice of arranging objects (such as furniture) to help people achieve their goals. What is the American corporation translation of feng shui?

Answer: 5S (5 = feng, S = shui)

A very good client (definition: one in which top management actually is open to modifying its behaviors and management structure; one that wants to learn real lean—and not practice fake lean) asked me to determine why its waste-reduction and quality-improvement efforts in the order-entry process had run into a roadblock and weren’t progressing any further after some initial successes.

A few weeks ago, I found myself and my family on a beach making a sand castle. It was the last day of our vacation and shortly after we began working the warm South Carolina sand, an official approached us and asked if we would like to be contestants in the weekly sand sculpture contest. Why not?

At first, we were just playing in the sand with no purpose. But since judges and bystanders were watching the progression of our work, we got serious. Soon we began incorporating architectural details that our red-plastic-bucket-toting competitors hadn’t contemplated. We got serious solely because others were evaluating our progress. With knees in sand, our actions were driven by the adage, “What gets evaluated gets improved.”

The same can be said about an SPC system. Yes, it’s important for operators to gather data. Yes, it’s important that control chart alarms are acted upon by process experts. And yes, it’s important for an operator to assess data from their shop-floor viewpoint. All of these actions support localized control of individual processes. And, of course, these are all actions necessary to sustain manufacturing consistency and control.

However, if no one actively oversees the big picture, the likelihood of reducing overall costs and improving macro quality will be minimal.

In the last couple of months, two topics have become particularly vexing to me. First, how can we be environmentally responsible by purchasing E85 fuel when there are few service stations that provide this new elixir? Second—even more difficult to comprehend—why do companies eliminate products and services without surveying customers?

To address this latter oversight, customer service representatives and wait staff at restaurants seem to be reading from the same script when they say, “Yes, everyone is asking about that item. Maybe you should contact the management.” Permit me to tackle the E85 conundrum first.

When our 2001 Buick LeSabre’s odometer registered 130,000 miles I figured it was a good time to go into debt again and purchase one of those gas-sipping automobiles that burns alternative fuel. Not that I’m overly concerned about the polar bears in the Arctic, I’m just a frugal individual, and I assumed that exhibiting some semblance of being environmentally friendly and filling my tank with alternative fuel would placate the environmentalists. To that end, my wife Mary and I set out on our quest.

A few weeks ago, I found myself and my family on a beach making a sand castle. It was the last day of our vacation and shortly after we began working the warm South Carolina sand, an official approached us and asked if we would like to be contestants in the weekly sand sculpture contest. Why not?

At first, we were just playing in the sand with no purpose. But since judges and bystanders were watching the progression of our work, we got serious. Soon we began incorporating architectural details that our red-plastic-bucket-toting competitors hadn’t contemplated. We got serious solely because others were evaluating our progress. With knees in sand, our actions were driven by the adage, “What gets evaluated gets improved.”

The same can be said about an SPC system. Yes, it’s important for operators to gather data. Yes, it’s important that control chart alarms are acted upon by process experts. And yes, it’s important for an operator to assess data from their shop-floor viewpoint. All of these actions support localized control of individual processes. And, of course, these are all actions necessary to sustain manufacturing consistency and control.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has solely sourced a grant to the American Society for Quality and the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB) to develop a national voluntary conformity assessment accreditation and certification program for private sector emergency preparedness and business continuity. The driver is Public Law 110-53 “Implementing the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007,” specifically Title IX on Private Sector Preparedness.

ASQ and DHS haven’t publicly announced this and its implications. ASQ’s and ANAB’s involvement will create new opportunities for quality professionals and for companies. So, let’s start at the beginning:

ANAB opportunity