On My Mind
I’m often asked by young professionals in the Quality Management field which “classic” books I’d recommend they read. My response is typically in the form of my “Mount Rushmore” of four classic Quality Management books: Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product by Dr. Walter A. Shewhart; Out of the Crisis by Dr. W. Edwards Deming; Introduction to Quality Control by Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa; and Statistical Methods for Quality Improvement by Dr. Hitoshi Kume (Editor). There are many other books worth the time . . . but those are four excellent books to start. If you are interested in strengthening your Quality Management foundation, then give those books a try.

Interesting Stories
The Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2023 will be held again in Wijk aan Zee (“Vike On Zay”)—a coastal village in the Netherlands—from January 13, 2023 (opening ceremonies) to January 29, 2023. It is the 85th year of the tournament and this annual event typically “kicks-off” the chess world for the new calendar year. I follow the Masters Category every year which this year is comprised of fourteen Grandmasters including Magnus Carlsen of Norway who is the current World Chess Champion. Here are the competitors in the Masters Category in order of ranking: Magnus Carlsen (Norway); Ding Liren (China); Fabiano Caruana (USA); Anish Giri (Netherlands); Wesley So (USA); Richard Rapport (Romania); Levon Aronian (USA); Dommaraju Gukesh (India); Arjun Erigaisi (India); Parham Maghsoodloo (Iran); Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Uzbekistan); Vincent Keymer (Germany); Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa (India); and Jorden van Foreest (Netherlands). Each player will play a classical chess game against every other player over thirteen rounds. A classical chess game can last several hours and is often an exhausting ordeal. If you are interested in following the tournament, then watch the live broadcast on Chess.com.

Company News
There are several public learning opportunities on the horizon: the Strategic Improvement Black Belt course starts January 18, 2023; the Strategic Improvement Green Belt course starts February 14, 2023; the Strategic Improvement Master Black Belt course starts March 7, 2023; and the next Analytics Strategy course is scheduled for April 17, 2023. The course brochures are available on the PUBLIC SEMINARS page of this website.

Intriguing Reads
The Deming Prize and Deming Grand Prize are administered by the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) which is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Those awards are recognized as the most prestigious Quality awards in the world. The Deming Prize is the first of the two Quality awards. An organization can apply for the Deming Grand Prize three or more years after it has received the Deming Prize. The Deming Prize and Deming Grand Prize winners are announced by JUSE in the Fall each year. There were three Deming Prize winners in 2022: Aso Iizuka Hospital (Japan); Apollo Tyres Limited, Chennai Plant (India); and Cataler (Wuxi) Automotive Environment Technology Co., Ltd. (China). I’ve been analyzing the case study for Apollo Tyres Limited, Chennai Plant. I was especially impressed with the unwavering commitment of Apollo Tyres to world class quality; its House of TQM; how Apollo Tyres deploys business objectives; and its Policy Management Flow Chart. If you want to learn more about world class organizations, then you might visit the JUSE website.