Personal Profile: Edward Halteman

Ed Halteman took his first survey methods course in 1978 and has worked with surveys ever since. Ed has designed and analyzed surveys across a wide variety of disciplines including social science, manufacturing, quality, sales and marketing, opinion research, retail, travel, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and more.

Ed has worked with companies large and small, applying his survey skills to solve business problems going back over 20 years. While with Rockwell International, Ed worked with chemists, physicists, engineers, manufacturing personnel and management. He developed critical sampling plans for plant security, health safety and waste management. Ed also developed and taught a 56-hour course on "Process Improvement and Statistics" for engineers, which included instruction on survey design and analysis.

Ed worked in the Corporate Quality department at StorageTek Inc. for eight years, becoming the company-wide resource for survey support. He designed surveys in nearly every department of the company including: manufacturing, human resources, events planning, travel, engineering, sales and marketing, finance, project management, internal audit and quality assurance. Duties included responsibility for global customer and employee satisfaction surveys. In 1994 Ed co-authored a pamphlet on doing surveys, entitled "Surveys Made Easy (And Done Right!)".

Starting in 1998, Ed revolutionized the use of data for decision-making at StorageTek by researching and introducing the use of online surveys. In conjunction with the ability to conduct web-based surveys, Ed and a colleague pioneered the concept of a "customer panel" - a group of customers who routinely provide feedback for company decision-making. Ed applied the same concept two years later to StorageTek's sales and service organization as a way to obtain input for headquarters directly from field employees. Surveys using this "Field Panel" had response rates of 70-85%. Since 1998, Ed has designed and analyzed more than 150 web-based surveys.

Ed's expertise extends beyond surveys and sampling. He has taught classes on measurement, data analysis and statistical process control. Ed is a published author in statistical journals, and is the author of numerous conference papers.

Ed has a master's degree in applied mathematics, and a Ph.D. in statistics.