Al Kitlica has held important quality management positions in industry including responsibility for a 200-person Quality Operations Group for the one billion dollar, Strategic Electronics Division of Motorola, Scottsdale, Arizona. This facility was a MIL Q 9858A certified facility and the first Malcolm Baldrige Award recipient (1988).  This facility was a key subcontractor for the U.S. government on projects such as: The Voyager Space Satellite, Fleet SatCom, The Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) and Strategic Defense Initiative programs such as Brilliant Pebbles.  In addition to his quality management experience with Motorola, Mr. Kitlica was a Technical Service Section Manager with Johnson & Johnson in the healthcare field. While with J&J, he led the effort to implement real time feedback  systems integrating SPC and advanced logic control systems, resulting in verifiable cost improvements in excess of $6 million annually.

In the past twenty years, Mr. Kitlica has been directly involved with over seven hundred customer, supplier and government audits including: seven national-level Quality System Reviews (QSR’s) for Motorola, sixty government audits with the National Security Agency, two Air Force audits (AFPRO), the Malcolm Baldrige process, the NASA Quality Award process, forty F&DA product audits to GMP 21 cfr 820 and over four hundred ISO 9000 and QS-9000 quality system audits. These audits were in response to requirements such as: MIL Q9858A, GMP 820/860, ISO 9001/9002/QS-9000, AS9100 or Baldrige criteria.  Further, Mr. Kitlica was a voting member on the U.S. TAG 176 National Committee from 1991-1993. This technical committee interfaces with ANSI, RAB, the ISO and U.S. commerce to rewrite, refine and improve the ISO-9000 Standards.

In 1989, AL KITLICA founded Quality Applications, Inc., an international consulting company specializing in quality management system design and development and on-site training courses in ISO-9000, TS 16949, AS 9100 and ISO 14000, including a 4 and ½ day, IRCA registered, Lead Auditor Course.  His company, QAI, also offers the only comprehensive, 3-day, Process Auditing Course in the United States.

Mr. Kitlica holds B.S. and MBA degrees and, in addition to his academic background, became an ASQ CERTIFIED QUALITY ENGINEER (1979) and CERTIFIED RELIABILITY ENGINEER (1985), and SIX SIGMA BLACK BELT INSTRUCTOR (Motorola 1988).  Further Mr. Kitlica is currently a REGISTERED QUALITY SYSTEM LEAD AUDITOR with ASQ/RAB (1993).  Mr. Kitlica was the thirty-first RAB registered QMS lead auditors in the U.S.  In 2003, Mr. Kitlica attained Provisional Assessor status in the AS 9100 Aerospace Standard. In 2005, Mr. Kitlica also became an Arizona State Baldrige Award Esaminer and now actively participates in the State’s Quality Award process.

In 1998, his firm, Quality Applications, Inc., was chosen by the United States Air Force as their ISO 9000 consulting body ultimately resulting in Tinker Air Force Base becoming the first U.S. Air Force facility to be ISO 9000 certified and registered. This certification was necessary to secure a multi-year, follow-on award contract of 13.5 billion dollars for this 22,000-person facility in Oklahoma City, OK.

Since 1989, Mr. Kitlica has addressed or instructed over 24,000 professionals in thirty-four U.S. states and seven countries in Quality Management System development through ISO 9000.  To date, he has conducted approximately 265 public or in-house ISO seminars.  Further, Mr. Kitlica has spoken at eighteen major universities and, in 1992, addressed his second ASQ, National Quality Conference in Nashville, TN, on Supply Chain Management topics.  In 2002 and 2004, Mr. Kitlica was a featured speaker at the International Conference on ISO 9000.  To date, over eighty companies have become ISO/QS registered through the consulting efforts of his company, Quality Applications, Inc.