1. APRIL 2016, VOLUME 55/NUMBER 4
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THE INNOVATIVE
QUALITY EXPERT
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2. If you recognize Praveen Gupta’s name,
perhaps it’s because you read one of
his more than 200 articles or 14 books.
Or maybe you attended a conference in
Chicago, Kuala Lumpur, or Zagreb and
heard him speak. Perhaps you work at
one of the more than 100 companies
he’s worked with during his long career.
Beginning at Motorola, Praveen
has worked in quality from Austin to
Chicago to Silicon Valley; was appoint-
ed an ASQ Fellow before the age of 40;
and received the Distinguished Service
Award from the Chicago ASQ Section.
Today he works on quality and innova-
tion in Palo Alto, CA.
“I’ve been very impressed with him,”
says Dr. H. James Harrington, our 2009
Quality Professional of the Year. “He’s
more leading edge. So many people
are just regurgitating what’s been said
before. He’s working more two or three
years in the future.”
GETTING STARTED
Praveen is an electrical engineer by
training and began his career in 1981
as a product engineer at Motorola. He
took different positions in Motorola—
“I loved Motorola,” he says—and found
a job in the quality department. “I said,
‘I’ll be in quality for three years.’” Then
he took ASQ’s certified quality engi-
neer (CQE) exam and passed. He hasn’t
left quality yet.
“When I joined the quality depart-
ment in the early ‘80s, the relationship
between quality and other functions
used to be adversarial,” he says. “My
boss wasn’t allowed to go into the
manufacturing area.”
Praveen, as a new quality guy, wanted
to see what was happening on the floor,
and didn’t know he wasn’t allowed to go
there. So he did, and opened up a dia-
logue between the manufacturing and
quality departments.
Martin Swarbrick knew Praveen back
from their time together at Motorola
when Praveen led the Small Wins to Six
Sigma initiative. “He’s a very dedicated
professional, very inquisitive and curi-
ous about the topics he’s interested in,
always looking for new and refreshing
perspectives,” Swarbrick said.
Later Swarbrick went on to another
company and Praveen started his own
company. But they kept in touch over the
years, discussing quality and innovation.
“Innovation was Motorola, and is
Motorola,” Swarbrick says. “It wasn’t
just innovation in products; it was inno-
vation in processes and improvements,
innovation in the broadest sense.”
This concept of innovation obviously
stuck with Praveen.
MOVING ON
Around this time, he moved from
Austin to Chicago, and transferred
within Motorola to near the headquar-
ters in Schaumburg, IL. This was when
ISO 9001 was becoming big, along
with the Malcolm Baldrige award, and
Praveen was interested in taking his
quality skills to small businesses. He
started his own consulting business
and taught for Motorola University.
While he was teaching, he was hired to
reduce defects at a small company, and
this started his consulting career.
His writing career began at Motorola
as well. Motorola had incentives for
publishing papers: they paid you to
MANAGEMENT
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The Innovative
Quality Expert
Praveen Gupta, our 2016 Quality Professional of the Year,
has been around the world sharing his enthusiasm for quality.
BY MICHELLE BANGERT
Reprinted from Quality Magazine, Copyright April 2016, www.qualitymag.com

4. write and gave you a plaque called the
Silver Quill for your office. “I wanted
that plaque,” says Praveen.
His first article took 13 rounds of
edits, but he became hooked. Today
he has written 14 books, some of
which have been translated into
Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Chinese,
Lithuanian and Polish.
And he’s also helped others get
involved in publishing. Rajesh-Kumar
Tyagi has co-authored several books with
him. They would meet every month,
sometimes every week, sometimes spend-
ing the entire weekend in the office, play-
ing devil’s advocate to polish their ideas.
Before working with Praveen, Tyagi said
the world of publishing was just a black
box to him. Working together allowed
them to pool their skills. “I learned how
to write books, he learned how to teach
business graduates,” says Tyagi.
Praveen has taught at the Illinois
Institute of Technology (IIT) in
Chicago, DePaul University’s MBA
program, the University of Illinois at
Chicago, and in Mexico. In 2008, he
received a Professional Achievement
Award from his alma mater, IIT
Chicago, for his work in the field of
quality and innovation.
The books have also brought speak-
ing invitations. He’s spoken at ASQ
meetings in Chicago, Central Illinois,
Detroit, Seattle, Silicon Valley and
Montreal. Today he’s the chairperson
of the ASQ section in San Francisco.
“He’s always willing to help anyone
with anything, and always with a smile
on his face,” says Dan Brown, who met
Praveen through the ASQ Chicago sec-
tion. “He’s very knowledgeable, but in
a way that he doesn’t come across as a
know-it-all; it comes across as confident
in his abilities. A lot of people know a
lot of stuff and want you to know how
much they know. That’s not Praveen.”
Brown says Praveen could explain
concepts in such a way that he under-
stood them. “I’m grateful for every pre-
sentation I got to hear from Praveen,”
Brown says. “Praveen is so proficient in
so many areas. He truly is brilliant. I
learned a lot listening to him.”
THE QUALITY JOURNEY
After leaving Motorola, he began train-
ing and consulting. He’s worked with
more than 100 companies in various
industries. “Every company should
really focus on quality from a profit
point of view,” Praveen says.
He did consulting work for about
20 years until he was lured to Silicon
Valley to work at a startup.
Greg Podshadley was looking for a
director of quality for a start-up com-
pany, and said it was a difficult task.
“Those kinds of people are really hard
to find,” Podshadley says.
When he found Praveen, he con-
vinced him to move from Chicago to
Silicon Valley to take the job at Prysm,
a company that makes video walls, and
he dropped right in at the company.
With his many years of experience in
quality, he was able to make it a prior-
ity and methodically convince others
to get involved in quality.
“I’ve seen other people use the big stick
approach to quality management. He
doesn’t do it that way,” Podshadley says.
Praveen was at Prysm for about two
and a half years, and then decided
to pursue other projects. “He’s head
and shoulders above most people
when it comes to promoting quality,”
Podshadley says. “There isn’t anybody
that’s doing that as much as him.”
IN THE VALLEY
“Silicon Valley is the startup land,”
Praveen says. “It’s interesting how many
quality opportunities are advertised
in Silicon Valley. Startups don’t get
enough time to focus on quality. I’m
trying to figure out how to get quality
thinking in the entrepreneurial mind.
Quality engineering and the quality of
R&D are becoming more critical.”
In addition to his engineering skills,
Praveen enjoys the human element
of quality and working with people.
“People love quality guys as long as
they offer help,” Praveen says. It can
be a rewarding career. He’s been told,
“You don’t realize how much stress you
reduce, by improving quality; good
quality systems improve the quality of
life for people at work.”
INNOVATING AND HAVING FUN
He’s missed in Chicago, not the least
because his former colleagues now eat at
their desks instead of playing ping pong at
lunch. Scott Pfeiffer worked with Praveen
at IIT, helped with his innovation confer-
ence, and used to play ping pong with him
during their lunch break. Once, Pfeiffer
attended a tour of Google that Praveen
took his students on and saw people play-
ing ping pong in the game room.
“Praveen’s approach was to step away
from a problem and then refocus and
attack it from another angle,” Pfeiffer
says. “When we went to Google, I was
thinking, ‘Wow, they are saying the
same things he’s saying.’”
He says Praveen was so enthusiastic
about innovation, and students raved
about his innovation course.
“Praveen is a great person,” Pfeiffer
says. “It sounds so cliché, but really, he
was very encouraging, easy to get along
with, very cooperative, a fantastic co-
worker and person.”
Innovation has long been a passion
of his. Dr. H. James Harrington says
Praveen was talking about innovation
before it became popular. “Praveen is
a visionary,” Harrington says. “He’s
looking forward, not trying to be part
of the mold; he’s looking at how to
change the mold, to be more efficient
and more adaptable.”
A COLLEAGUE AND A FRIEND
Arvind Srivastava met Praveen through
an alumni association and then worked
together for about 10 years at Accelper
Consulting. Srivastava now teaches
Praveen’s former class at IIT and uses
his book “Business Innovation in the
21st Century” as a textbook. He also co-
authored the “Stat Free Six Sigma” book
with Praveen. Although Srivastava
loves statistics, he said the book came
about when the two of them realized
the group they were teaching was not
comfortable with statistics. Thus, they
decided to tone down the stats element
and focus on the intent of the process.
“He’s a wonderful person,” Srivastava
says. “I feel honored to be working with
him and to know him.” Q
Michelle Bangert is the managing editor
of Quality Magazine. For more information
on our Professional of the Year award, visit
www.qualitymag.com.