The Councillors

Donald Dewar

In 1973, Donald Dewar pioneered the introduction of quality circles in the United States. In 1988, he was selected to serve as an examiner for the newly created Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (the United States equivalent to Japan's famed Deming Prize). He is a fellow in the American Society for Quality and in 2002 was honored with their Distinguished Service Medal.

Don has spoken to thousands of people in hundreds of sessions in 25 nations worldwide, and he has authored or collaborated on nearly 300 articles and papers, 46 books and produced 97 training videos. Three of his books have sold over one million copies each.

His materials are in the following languages:
English, French, Finnish, Swedish, Dutch, Spanish, Turkish, Norwegian and German.

Don's MBA is from Santa Clara University, and he has an extensive background in industrial engineering, manufacturing, quality control, finance, industrial relations and marketing.

During 1977, Don co-founded the Association for Quality and Participation (formerly the International Association of Quality Circles), and served as its president for three terms. He has also been involved in several professional and charitable organizations, has been president in some of them, and has been in a number of leadership positions with others.

He has spoken before the prestigious Commonwealth Club in California and has keynoted several national and international conferences.He was selected to write the quality circle story for the McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science and Technology.

He has implemented employee involvement, quality circles, self-managed work teams, lean operations, quality control, statistical process control and others in hundreds of organizations throughout the world. His techniques are being implemented by representatives in several countries throughout the world.
( http://www.qci-intl.com/ )

David Hutchins

David is recognized both at home and in Japan as the pioneer of the introduction of Quality Circles and other Japanese developed management concepts to literally hundreds of organizations around the world since the mid 1970's. He has also played a significant international role in pioneering the development of Western Style Total Quality Management.

David's personal expertise includes: Strategy and Policy Deployment (Hoshin Kanri), Benchmark planning, Just in Time (JIT) and the associated concepts such as Cycle Time Reduction, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), and Supply Chain Quality, Design Process Improvement, Producer Risk Management and Managing and Maintaining a Product Recall System, Self Assessment to various International and National Quality Award criteria.

David is also an honorary member of the Asian Pacific Quality Control Association, a member of the American Society for Quality special international task force, and was for many years the Chairman and UK representative, prior to recent restructuring on the European Organization for Quality, Human Factors in Quality Management COMSEC.

He is also a member of - the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, The Institute of Electrical Engineers (Manufacturing Engineering section), and a Fellow of the Institute of Quality Assurance and a member of the British Institute of Management. ( www.hutchins.co.uk )

Dallas Blankenship

Dr Dallas is the Vice President of the World Council for Total Quality and Excellence in Education. He is recognized by the American Association of School Administrators as one of the ten 'Leaders of Learning'.

Dallas is the winner of the 'Leader of Learning Award' given by the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents. He is nominated by the Marshall Chapter of Phi Delta Kappa Educational Organization's 75 outstanding educators in the United States. The nominations are considered for honors by the National Phi Delta Kappa Organization.Dr Dallas Blankenship became the Superintendent of Scott county Schools, Georgetown, Kentucky, USA in 1992. From 1992 to present he is a catalyst and the motivation for developing and improving the education system in Kentucky and West Virginia.

Dallas is a Principal at five different elementary schools in Cabell County in West Virginia.

He continues to teach graduate course at the Georgetown College, Marshall University and West Virginia University. Dallas sits in the Board of Directors of the Centre for Quality People and Organizations and the International Alliance for Invitational Schools. He holds a number of other leadership positions in Kentucky.

In Y2002, Dallas and his colleagues hosted a visit by Principals of Schools from Hong Kong. The principals obtained valuable insights into Invitational Learning - an area that is actively pioneered by Dallas.
( www.questlearningskills.org )

John Man

Dr. John Man devotes his energies to develop competencies and intelligence in people and organizations. John consults, teaches and conducts seminars on people development programmes and gives advice to organizations on:

Grievance handling,

Emotional Competencies,

Organization change and culture,

Personality analysis and profiling,

Quality management and deployment, and

Management teams and group dynamics,

John is the managing director of Smart Process International, which is dedicated to developing people and organizations in achieving best-in-class performance since 1991. His approaches and efforts are evident in leading multinational corporations, government organizations, small and medium enterprises operating in China, Hong Kong, Korea, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.

John's primary discipline is in quality management. He is a practicing occupational/industrial psychologist. He obtained his Six Sigma Master Black Belt certification from the Juran Institute, USA in 1991. He is actively involved in advising, deploying and developing the Six Sigma breakthrough methodology in the government and commercial organizations and small and medium enterprises in the Asia Pacific Region. John works through the United Nations – International Labour Organization, UNIDO and the national quality and productivity organizations of Hong Kong , India , Indonesia , Philippines , Singapore and Vietnam to apply quality management methods in enterprises.

For example:

1. Hong Kong Productivity Council – Consulting, developing and deploying Lean management and Six Sigma in the Guangdong region and Hong Kong . The industries include security systems, banking, education, insurance, telecommunications, and manufacturing and information technology.
2. Indonesian Quality Management Association – Training senior executives in applying quality improvement methods in local enterprises. The industries include food and beverage, manufacturing, banking and telecommunications.
3. Spring Singapore – Developing competencies and deploying quality and innovation teams in housing, defence, public utilities, education, finance, insurance, aircraft industries, hotel and manufacturing.
4. Vietnam Productivity Centre – Consulting and deploying process improvements and quality service delivery in the state owned enterprises. The industries include garment manufacturing, cleaner production systems, printing and telecommunications.
5. National Productivity Corporation, Malaysia – Enabling NPC consultants to deploy quality improvement programs in local enterprises and assess the projects systematically.

John is currently deploying Lean management systems, Six Sigma teams and developing in house competencies for the Win-Hanverky Group in China , a supplier of Adidas sportswear. His experience in the field of quality and productivity management is recognised through a number of fellowships and appointments:

1. Fellow, World Academy of Productivity Science
2. Fellow, Certified Management Consultant
3. Fellow, Hong Kong Quality Management Association
4. Fellow, Six Sigma Society of Hong Kong
5. Vice President, Asia Pacific Quality Organization
6. Technical Expert (Quality and Productivity), Asian Productivity Organization
7. Certified Senior IQC Judge and Councillor
8. Certified Six Sigma Black Belt – American Society of Quality

John holds a PhD in Quality Management, a MBA (Change Management) and MA (Education, Training and Development), a BA (History, Political Science and Sociology) and BA (Industrial Psychology).