CAHS Alumni Spotlight - Just do it: business excellence through product integrity

Have you ever wondered what goes into making your favorite clothes? Or why some clothes you buy fall apart quickly and without cause? Such questions are Diane Currie’s (’85, MS in Textiles and Clothing) job to answer. She’s the senior manager of apparel product integrity at Nike, Inc and she supports product safety, quality, and reliability for the U.S. apparel market.

Nike wants to ensure their apparel success through product superiority, which is where Currie is involved. Currie’s role in product integrity, traditionally known as quality control, encompasses quality and process excellence from concept through consumer use. She works with merchants and designers to determine what consumers need and measures how a previous product has performed. She works with material and product developers to determine key product characteristics and develops methods to set and measure these characteristics confirmed through pilotwear testing.

Her focus on apparel quality comes in three steps: identify the consumer needs; measure the performance, errors, and reliability; resolve defects and enhance process improvement to make a better product. “To have continued success, you must have product and process excellence. You have to think about what value each step is adding, how it adds to the worth (the cost the consumer is willing to pay) of the product, and how it improves the key benefit of the garment,” she says.

Asking product and process questions is a major component of problem-solving, another key part of Currie’s job. “First, identify the problems. Then you focus on one problem, determine where and why the problems occurred in the process and begin fixing it,” she says.

With all this focus on performance, consistency, and problem-solving, is Currie’s graduate work helping her? “You need to know basic statistics. In the corporate world, metrics and measurement are everything. I draw on project management skills, research methods, and textile performance characteristics I learned in my graduate classes for my current position.”

Before Nike, Currie worked for Eddie Bauer for 15 years, finishing as director of quality assurance. Prior to that, she spent three years each as an instructor in Clothing and Textiles at San Diego State University and a high school in Arizona. “In the third year of a job you know if it’s right for you and if you’re contributing and making a difference,” she says. With three and a half years at Nike, Currie is making a difference in product and process excellence in the integrity of Nike apparel.

The Department of Design & Merchandising, College of Applied Human Sciences, hosted Currie this spring as part of their Executive-in-Residence series.

This article was published in the CSU Alumni Association’s monthly membership e-newsletter, AlumLine. Stay connected to CSU alumni and friends around the world – become a member today. Join the CSU Alumni Association at www.CSUAlum.com.

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Contact:  Gretchen Gerding
Telephone:  970.491.5182
Email:  Gretchen.Gerding@colostate.edu