Douglas K. Howell
Doug Howell is an organizational change agent with a passion for customers and process excellence. He has over thirty years experience in quality management, project management, and business process improvement. He is a recognized expert in the quality field, and brings a unique combination of technical knowledge and business experience to every engagement. Since founding Quality On Purpose LLC, he has provided quality management and technology consulting services for high-potential startup companies and other regional businesses and non-profit agencies.
Experience
Doug began his career as a statistician and quality engineer with Hewlett-Packard Company, back when the HP name was synonymous with Quality.
He quickly rose through the ranks, and served most of his 20-year career with HP as a quality engineering manager responsible for product development testing and worldwide regulatory compliance.
During that time, Doug was a key contributor to more than fifty (50+) new product programs, including LaserJet printers, technical computers, storage arrays, operating systems, and application software.
In addition to building world-class products, Doug also conceived and led a continual stream of breakthrough innovations in HP's product development processes. These process improvements resulted in dramatic reductions in new product time to market, as well as multi-million dollar savings in R&D budget and headcount.
After leaving HP, Doug joined Albertson's Inc, where he led business process design and improvement initiatives for a large corporate IT department. It was this work that convinced him that the knowledge and experience he had gained at HP would be of tremendous benefit to business leaders in other industries.
Education
Doug holds a M.S. degree in Statistics from Colorado State University and a B.A. degree in Mathematics and Chemistry from Indiana University.
He also completed doctoral coursework in Applied Mathematics at the University of California at Davis and the Eberhard Karls-Universitat in Tubingen, Germany under a fellowship from the German government.
Patents, Publications, and Presentations
Doug has lectured frequently and written articles and training courses on quality management, process analysis, software metrics, R&D process improvement, outsourcing strategy, statistical quality control, and customer satisfaction surveys.
He is an accomplished public speaker and is comfortable with audiences of all sizes and backgrounds, ranging from lecture halls to classrooms to small group discussions. In addition to live events, he has experience using a variety of electronic media including virtual meetings, electronic classrooms, and video podcasts. As a sideline, he has also provided voice-overs and narration for technical and general commercial productions.
Doug is the holder of U.S. Patent No. 6,647,224 "Optical Monitor For Imaging Device Filter" (2003) and is the co-inventor of several other breakthroughs in the fields of digital imaging and document workflow management.
Certifications and Professional Associations
Doug is a Project Management Professional (PMP) and a Six Sigma Black Belt (SSBB), and holds an ITIL V3 Foundation certification.
He is also a Certified Software Test Engineer (CSTE) and former board examiner for the ASQ Certified Quality Engineer (CQE) and Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE) programs.
He is a member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), Project Management Institute (PMI), Southwest Idaho Software Quality Association (SISQA), Business Process Management Institute (BPMI), and the Boise Agile Software Alliance. He has also served in various capacities as a chapter officer in several of these groups.