American Society for Quality joins green initiative

As part of its effort to help organizations achieve their social responsibility efforts by using quality practices, the American Society for Quality (ASQ) has teamed up with the City of Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, and Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) to lead the Metro-Milwaukee Green initiative. This county-wide effort aims to advance Southeastern Wisconsin as an international leader in sustainability.

”Quality plays an indispensable role in helping organizations achieve their social responsibility objectives,” said Roberto Saco, ASQ president. “Social responsibility and quality are strongly linked through common principles such as ethics and respect for people. These principles have been ingrained in the philosophies of influential quality management thinkers over the years, for example W.E. Deming, G. Taguchi and K. Ishikawa.”

Metro-Milwaukee Green (MMG) demonstrates the commitment by Milwaukee organizations to reduce waste, reduce their impact on the environment, contribute to their bottom lines through reduced costs, and enhance customer satisfaction. Waste includes the waste of energy, water, unnecessary impact to our environment, inefficiency in all its forms, and the waste of the consequence of unethical conduct.

MMG has five steps designed to engage the public and private sector to create sustainable programs that will have the least impact on the environment and community. These steps include:

1.      Develop a recycling program.

2.      Conduct an energy audit.

3.      Implement a systematic and comprehensive green cleaning program.

4.      Join the sustainable business network on www.TheSRO.org, a Web site created by ASQ and its partners to provide information about social responsibility. TheSRO.org provides effective how-to’s for integrating quality social responsibility into your existing organizational strategies, systems, practices and processes.

5.      Learn more about the Great Lakes water initiatives in Milwaukee.

To learn more about this movement and to join the Sustainable Business Network, visit www.TheSRO.org.

About ASQ

The American Society for Quality, www.asq.org, has been the world's leading authority on quality for more than 60 years. With more than 90,000 individual and organizational members, the professional association advances learning, quality improvement and knowledge exchange to improve business results and to create better workplaces and communities worldwide. As a champion of the quality movement, ASQ offers technologies, concepts, tools and training to quality professionals, quality practitioners and everyday consumers, encouraging all to Make Good Great. ASQ has been the sole administrator of the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award since 1991. Headquartered in Milwaukee, ASQ is a founding partner of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), a prominent quarterly economic indicator, and also produces the Quarterly Quality Report.