Description: This seminar explores the prospects of better thinking as defined by the management and leadership philosophies of W. Edwards Deming, Genichi Taguchi, Russell Ackoff, Tom Johnson, and others. Among the topics of discussion will be the "resource management" and it's applicability to variation management, systems thinking, and working together. Blue Pen Companies represent environments of growing levels of team work, wherein “acting locally and thinking globally” is more than a thoughtful expression. By contrast to Red Pen Companies, where team work inevitably translates to “local sub-optimization”, Blue Pen Companies offer the prospect of "working together through thinking together." The seminar will introduce you to these ideas through two experiential sessions which were designed to allow participants to "feel the difference" between Red Pen and Blue Pen Companies.

Target Audience: Individual contributors, members of management, suppliers, and customers who are providing leadership in "resource management" and "resource leadership" activities and in the transformation of their respectve organizations from the "Prevailing Style of Management, " of independent parts, (Red Pen Companies) to managing with awareness of the interdependence of the elements of any system (Blue Pen Companies).

Organizational Issues: Proficiency in thinking together is fundamental to the ability to learn together and work together as "one enterprise."

Objectives: At the completion of the seminar the participants should have the ability to better appreciate systemic interdependencies, the impact of variation, the vitality of people thinking together, and the limitations of individual and organizational knowledge. Taken together, participants will become more aware of how to foster an environment of thinking together, learning together, and working together.

Cost: None

Handouts: Available for download after the Forum

Joe with his daughter, April

Biography: Joe Onstott was born and grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico. He acquired a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Oregon State University after which he hired into the Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne Canoga Park facility as a member of the technical staff. He also holds a masters degree in business from Pepperdine University and is an ASQ Certified Quality Engineer.

Joe has over 30 years of experience in the design, manufacture and test of rocket engines. He started his career designing hardware for the Space Shuttle Main Engine; hardware that he has designed is currently flying on the Space Shuttle. He then moved into management where he could focus more on improving the process of designing hardware and was responsible for both the Combustion Devices Design dept and the Engine Systems Design dept at different times. His emphasis for improving the Design Process is based on approaching the design of any component from the system perspective, understanding and integrating the manufacturing process and customer requirements into the design.

Joe is currently heading up the Engineering Quality and Continuous Improvement team where the team’s focus is improving engineering for the division. He is responsible for supporting the improvement of the engineering process by improving the infrastructure, management processes and the application of improvement tools. He also provides engineering support to the various products as needed. Joe has spent a significant amount of time applying systems thinking and Deming’s theory of management to the Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne business and currently teaches Managing Variation as a System and Design for Variation.

Joe has spent a significant amount of time applying systems thinking and Deming’s theory of management to the rocket business and currently presents PWR's Thinking Roadmap seminar, as well as Design for Variation.

He is an ASQ Certified Quality Engineer and has recently received his M.B.A. from Pepperdine University.

Contact: Joe can be reached by e-mail at joseph.onstott@pwr.utc.com for additional information about this Pre-Conference session.

Biography: Tim Higgins spent nearly 29 years employed by service the company currently governed by United Technologies’ Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) business unit in Canoga Park.  He retired, and returned to the same Canoga Park location as part of the NASA Resident Management Office. Departmental assignments took him from engineering to manufacturing operations to the total quality management office, to quality in the position of focal point for cause and corrective action.  He now represents NASA’s interests from the System and Mission Assurance viewpoint.   All was preceded by 8 years teaching high school English and mathematics. 

Tim claims that the company paid him to mess with the frontal lobes of those trapped in the prevailing style of management, though they thought he had a different assignment.  In support of PWR's "InThinking Roadmap" efforts, he conducts sessions in Six Thinking Hats, Lateral Thinking, Problem Solving and Decision Making and organizes discussions of Deming’s last book, The New Economics, obtaining local participants as well as participants from the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.

Tim spends three days a week playing soccer, some portion of  each day adoring a Brazilian wife who saves him a fortune shopping, and some time loving a trilingual-History-Channel-watching-19-year-old son.  He is especially fascinated with books describing the probabilistic and downright weird behavior of the universe and the people in it.  Tim has a Masters degree in English, has an A.S.Q. Certified Quality Engineer card, and a rather large collection of Brazilian soccer jerseys.

Contact: Tim can be reached by e-mail at timothy.t.higgins@nasa.gov for additional information about this Pre-Conference session.