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Wayne A. Taylor

wayne_taylor

"At Purdue, I learned both the theory and the practice of statistics. This included learning from both those who were recognized leaders in their disciplines and those who had a wealth of industrial experience with the knowledge of how to apply the theory."

 

Wayne Taylor's professional career has focused on providing engineers, quality experts and others the tools for success. He has bridged the gap between theory and statistical practice. He preaches best practices and continuous improvement principles for the medical device and pharmaceutical industries that are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. He spent 22 years at Baxter Healthcare Corp., retiring in 2000 as director of its quality technologies and its guru in Six Sigma continuous improvement principles. During his career at Baxter, he and his staff trained more than 800 of Baxter's engineers to serve as Six Sigma black belts. He wrote "Optimization and Variation Reduction in Quality," which outlines Baxter's approach to achieving Six Sigma quality. His second book, "Guide to Acceptance Sampling," highlighted Taylor's approach for selecting and justifying sampling plans as well as reducing inspection costs, which is used throughout the medical device industries. That very system helped Baxter save $30 million annually. Today, Taylor is chairman of Taylor Enterprises Inc., a company he launched to focus on development of the VarTran, Change-Point Analyzer, Sampling Plan Analyzer and Distribution Analyzer software packages. The company also provides Six Sigma consulting and training. A leading expert on acceptance sampling in the pharmaceutical, medical device and diagnostics industries, Taylor also has written articles on selecting statistically valid sampling plans that have become industry standards and are used by the FDA in its new inspector training. "Theory without practical applications and practices without sound theoretical basis are ineffective," he says.

Education:

  • BS '76, Mathematics/Statistics, Purdue University
  • MS '78, Statistics, Purdue University
  • PhD '83, Statistics, Purdue University
Career Highlights:
  • 1991-92 Publication of first two books
  • 1996 Elected fellow of American Society for Quality
  • 2000 Successful launch of own software, publishing and consulting company
  • 2008 Recognized as 100 Notables in the Medical Device Industry by MDDI magazine

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