The American Society for Quality has awarded the 2024 Distinguished Service Medal to Professor Ahmad Elshennawy. This is the highest honor for service that a member of ASQ can achieve.
The Distinguished Service Medal recognizes the lifetime contributions of a person who has served the quality industry as well as ASQ, which aims to establish quality processes and continuous improvement resources to help individuals and companies. Elshennawy is the only faculty member from UCF to receive this distinction.
“We should practice quality in our lives as humans and strive to provide quality for humanity,” Elshennawy says. “In all we do, quality matters a lot.”
Elshennawy joined UCF in 1986 after serving as a guest researcher for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Precision Engineering Division. He currently serves as the executive director of the UCF Quality Institute at the Department of Industrial Engineering and management Systems.
His teaching and research span a variety of areas including Six Sigma Quality and Lean Six Sigma, operations management, lean service, the statistical control of service processes, and business and process improvement and management. He has authored a number of research papers as well as the Certified Quality Engineer Handbook, the Certified Quality Technician Handbook and the Certified Quality Inspector Handbook.
Elshennawy earned his doctoral degree and master’s degree from Penn State, both in industrial engineering. He earned an additional master’s degree and bachelor’s degree in production engineering from Alexandria University. He is a member of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, a member of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, a Fellow of ASQ and an ASQ Certified Quality Engineer and Certified Reliability Engineer and is Academician in the International Academy for Quality (IAQ).
Story by Marisa Ramiccio