The recently formed Toyota North American Quality Advisory Panel heard from a number of experts in the field of automobile safety and quality management for its Science and Technology Roundtable on Friday at UALR. It was the group’s first chance to hear from outside experts.

The independent panel, charged with assessing Toyota’s strengthened safety and quality assurance practices, is led by former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater, and includes Dr. Mary L. Good, founding dean of the Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology at UALR and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Before convening in Little Rock, the panel most recently went to Japan to meet with Toyota Motor Corporation president Akio Toyoda and other top company executives. Earlier, the panel visited six Toyota facilities across the United States.

Besides Slater and Good, Toyota panel members attending the UALR meeting included:

• Patricia Goldman, former vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board;
• Brian O’Neill, former president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety; and
• Dr. Sheila Widnall, professor at MIT and former Secretary of the U.S. Air Force.

The UALR meeting represented the first time the panel, formed this spring, heard presentations from outside experts regarding issues of relevance to the automotive industry. Those sharing their views on auto safety and quality-assurance processes at Friday’s panel meeting included:

• Drs. Jeffrey Luftig and Barbara Lawton, University of Colorado engineering professors who teach the methods of quality pioneer Edwards Deming;
• Dr. Elizabeth Pierce, the chair of UALR’s Information Science program, who spoke to the group about the university’s Information Quality graduate program and its attempts to put the same disciplined processes into place in information quality that Deming did in manufacturing;
• Dr. Daniel Roos, MIT engineering professor and the founding director of MIT’s Center for Transportation Studies;
• Dr. Peter Sweatman, University of Michigan professor and Director of the Michigan Transportation Research Institute;
• Dr. John Morrell, engineering professor at Yale University and a member of the team that created the Segway two-wheeled dynamically stabilized human transporter;
• Dr. Nancy Leveson, engineering professor at MIT;
• Dr. Jeffrey Runge and Dr. Sue Bailey, both former administrators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

“We at UALR were proud to host the Toyota panel and to offer thought leadership on information quality and its importance to the automotive industry where quality and safety are concerned,” Dr. Good said.

Slater said the event was “an important step forward for the panel and for Toyota as we continue to work together to understand the unique challenges and opportunities related to safety and quality when working with today’s integrated, high-tech automotive systems.”

Senior officials of Toyota were present as observers at the roundtable and included, among others, Steve St. Angelo, the recently appointed Toyota North American Chief Quality Officer.

The two members of the Panel who were not in attendance were:

Norm Augustine, former Chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin

Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto

The panelists and program participants, many of whom had never visited Arkansas, were welcomed to the city and state by business, community and government leaders at the Clinton Presidential Center at an opening reception and dinner Thursday evening.