Chicago Section’s Contribution to the American Society for Quality
By Ron Tozydlo (second in a series)
I recently had the opportunity to dine with two long-time members of the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Chicago Section. During dinner and for quite some time after, Bill Lieberman, Gil Sorber and I discussed their involvement in quality and the Chicago Section, as well as exchanged numerous stories and personal perspectives on quality. Highlights of our discussion follow that include insights to the early evolution of quality in Chicago.
Although the Chicago Society for Quality Control began two years before the formation of the American Society for Quality Control (ASQC, the term “Control” was removed in 1997) and was a founding section, Bill Lieberman and Gil Sorber did not join ASQC until 1951, and have been members ever since. Their lack of membership during the first five years of the Society did not detract from their knowledge of its early history, however.
They explained that many early members of the Chicago Society for Quality Control had previously enrolled in the five-day War Production Board training courses during and after World War II at such locales as the University of Illinois, the Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of Iowa, and the University of Michigan. The formation of the Society was an extension of this quality training as well as an integration of others interested in quality whom had been meeting once a month at Northwestern University.
Bill Lieberman spent most of his professional career in quality. He began as a quality director for a capacitor company in Chicago, later worked at a manufacturer of tape recorders and then worked at Armour and Company for twelve years. It was during his last couple of years at Armour when Bill deviated from the quality profession slightly, working in the operations research department. Bill returned to quality when he accepted a job at Abbott Laboratories as a Senior Corporate Quality Consultant where he worked for twenty-three years.
Bill not only worked professionally in quality, he also volunteered as a teacher and has held various other positions in the Society throughout the years. Bill serves as a member of the Chicago Section Board till this day, and I enjoy interacting with him on a regular basis and listening to his “quality” jokes.
In his role as a teacher, Bill was instrumental in the “Two-Day” program in statistical quality control offered by the Chicago Section. The “Two-Day” program, first offered in 1946 and remaining yet today, continues to convey our section’s proud heritage. Throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, each year hundreds of students took advantage of the program. One of the reasons the program was developed was to offer training to a broad range of students. A 1961 survey of Chicago area universities conducted by a Section member indicated that only three out of five offered quality control courses and only to students with a background in calculus. Many of those making useful applications of control charts and acceptance sampling plans, as examples, did not meet those prerequisites. Many students not having a calculus background, as well as many that did, took advantage of the Chicago Section’s “Two-Day” programs’ offerings.
Mr. Lieberman and a colleague developed and presented the Chicago Section’s first course in Quality Management in 1963-1964. Later in 1967 Bill became the Chicago Section’s Training Institute Director and held the position for thirteen years. It was during this tenure that Bill implemented the reimbursement program to instructors and staff that paid them for the expenses incurred for traveling and food. Although Bill maintained that helping others in the quality field was a professional obligation and not an additional source of revenue, he realized that one should not endure continual personal expense. Bill continued teaching throughout this period and was again selected as the Director of the Section’s Training Institute from 1994-1997.
Although Bill’s involvement in the training program was immense, he still found time to serve the Chicago Section in other ways. He has held various positions on the Board including Chair and was a Deputy Regional Director of the American Society for Quality Control, serving Region 12 that includes sections in Illinois, northern Indiana, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota and Iowa.
Like many quality professionals in the early era and continuing yet today, Gil Sorber, a soft-spoken gentleman who commanded my attention throughout and after dinner, did not begin his professional life in quality. Gil started his professional career as a Plant Chemist at Corn Products in Argo, Illinois. He had always enjoyed mathematics and statistics, but indicated that back then pursuit of these sciences was usually limited to academia. After serving in World War II he spent some years employed as a chemist at a few different companies.
In the early 1950’s Gil became employed at Ordinance Ammunition at the Joliet
Arsenal in Joliet, Illinois where he was involved in determining the quality of
ammunition manufactured for the United States military. He conducted range and
accuracy experiments, which were undertaken to prevent the recurrence of the
fatal results experienced in World Wars I and II from weapons discharging as
they were fired. “Military personnel returning from World War I were not giving
a “V” for victory sign with their hands,” Gil stated, “they were expressing that
two percent of all US casualties resulted from weapons discharging as they were
fired.” Gil’s experiments determined that surface smoothness, copper-ring
fixation, and the ballistic
quality of the propellant were all critical-to-quality parameters.
After working at the arsenal, Gil accepted a position at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works plant in Cicero, Illinois as a Quality Engineer. Throughout his career at Western Electric, Gil was promoted to positions of increasing responsibility, eventually accepting the position of Corporate Quality Consultant that entailed much travel to various locations. Although Gil’s career did not overlap with Joseph Juran’s at Western Electric, Gil has retained a copy of Juran’s book that was used for quality training. He had interacted with other quality gurus at Western Electric, which included attending quality meetings with Harold Dodge. He also made me laugh when he told a story involving the former Director of Quality Assurance at Hawthorne, George Edwards.
Like Bill Lieberman, Mr. Sorber was involved in the Chicago Section’s quality control training program. He was the first teacher for the more formalized sixteen-week program offered by the section initially in 1961. The formalized program included a Section-approved course outline, the use of a standard quality control textbook (Gil chose Eugene L. Grant’s Statistical Quality Control), and culminated with the receipt of a Section Certificate earned by passing a written examination. Eight years later in 1968, the Society followed suit by introducing the Certified Quality Engineer (CQE) program.
After meeting at a Chicago Section meeting in the early years of the Society, Mr. Sorber and Mr. Lieberman have remained friends and colleagues for over fifty years. Both have contributed much to the development and evolution of the Chicago Section throughout those years. I feel privileged to have been able to sit down with Gil and Bill to discuss the history of quality in the Chicago area and I thank both of them for giving me the opportunity.