SYSTEMS SCIENCE AND APPLICATIONS IN QUALITY

Abstract

Everyday, Quality Professionals hear concepts such as chaos theory, neural networks, and data mining, what are they? and what are their current and future applications in Quality field? Briefly, systems science is an approach that views an entire system of components as an entity rather than simply an assembly of individual parts; each component is designed to fit properly with the other components rather than to function by itself. Systems science is a broad field covering topics such as systems thinking, modeling and simulation, fuzzy logic, artificial intelligence, neural networks, data mining and genetic algorithms. Systems science has applications in areas such as philosophy, biology, mathematics and computer science. Recently, Systems Science begin to enter the life of Quality professionals, the systems approach of ISO 9000:2000 and recommendation of systems thinking and complexity theory as models for establishing a Quality system are some examples of it. This presentation first introduces the basic concepts of systems science with definitions and examples then discusses their applications in the Quality field. As the subject is very broad to cover during a presentation, resources for further information and references will be provided for those who are interested in learning more in the field of systems science. This presentation should benefit Quality professionals who are interested in learning the fundamental concepts of systems science and their applications in Quality.

Bio

Sezai Dogdu is the Director of Corporate Quality at Woodhead Industries. Sezai has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, M.S. in Industrial Management and Ph.D. in Systems Science. Before joining Woodhead Industries, he held Quality related positions in companies such as Siemens, Matco Electronics and Andrea Electronics. Sezai has numerous publications and conference presentations on Statistical Process Control, process capability indices and process improvement.