May 5, 2022

Lifetime Achievement Award for SQMC Founder Ian Hannah

Communications · 1 minute read

The staff and associates of the Scottish Quality Management Centre recently honoured its founder, Ian W. Hannah, who retired last summer after 50 years service to the world of Quality.

Mr Hannah, who is a Senior Member of the American Society for Quality, and was a Fellow of the Chartered Quality Institute for many years, was "surprised and touched" by the surprise, informal ceremony, which replaced the annual 'Quality Professional of the Year' award for 2016.

Sound familiar?

Writing for Quality Progress magazine in February 2011, Mr Hannah described how his entry into the Quality profession was a decision his boss made for him:

As a young product design engineer in Vancouver, British Columbia, my boss called me into his office one morning and asked, "What do you know about quality?" I said, "Well, I can spell it. That’s about all!"

That moment you discover Quality is a life or death matter

I soon found and joined the American Society for Quality Control (now ASQ). By looking through the training advertisements, I saw that ASQC’s quality engineering five-day course was being held in Anaheim, CA.

At that January 1967 course, there were some quality engineers from a major supplier to the NASA space program. During the course, we heard terrible news: three NASA astronauts died during liftoff due to a quality problem. My colleagues at the training course were devastated by the news and felt some level of blame. It was then I realized just how important quality was, and I was determined to learn as much as possible.