An educator who advocates teaching without grading and a director of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner team will be featured presenters at the 2011 W.E. Deming Fall Conference October 15-16 at Purdue University. Professors in the Department of Technology Leadership & Innovation are involved with planning for the conference. Both presenters – David Langford of Langford International and Clifford Hall of Boeing Commercial Aircraft – will discuss how the systems thinking approach of W.E. Deming has been applied in their respective fields. The conference theme, "Learning – A Bridge to Innovation and Action," focuses on the ability to learn throughout one’s life, which is a prominent idea within Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge. “It boils down to the ability to make things better through knowledge gain,” said Dick Steele, a member of the Board of the W. Edwards Deming Institute. “I can’t think of anything that Deming’s philosophy does not apply to. It’s pretty universal.” Deming’s philosophy has been applied in settings as varied as manufacturing, K-postgraduate education, health care, government agencies, strategic business planning, administrative services, non-profit organizations, the U.S. Navy, software development, scientific research, and more. Registration and additional conference information is available on the conference Web site.