Quality Progress

Many people often stumble into a career in quality. It isn’t necessarily something they were seeking out, but one way or another they find themselves in a quality role. What was your introduction to quality?

I didn't realize it when I first graduated from college, but every role I've ever had has been in Quality:

• Collections - Customer Service
• Formalwear Consultant - Customer Service
• Borrower Contact Specialist/Analyst - Customer Service, documenting for quality improvement
• DFT Intern - Manufacturing Process Quality, Lean Manufacturing
• Customer Documentation Management - Configuration, Supplier Management
• Supplier Quality Technician
• Supplier Development Engineer
• Material Quality Engineer
• Global Compliance Manager

I didn't seek quality, but it found me.

I have been in quality for “many” years - . I started back when companies were beginning to come into suppliers, auditing their programs, just building programs, holding the smaller company accountable…I was a hand raiser and willing to try anything - that put my in the quality limelight and I've been a tech, an auditor, an external auditor, quality manager, quality supervisor…It's been a ride and quality should be a part of your daily life no matter what you do - representing a company, representing yourself, food industry, hospitality industry, production, white collar…it all requires a quality touch.

@Lindsay Pietenpol

I was introduced to the field of quality in 1998 at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton. Two years later I graduated with an associate degree in the field. Unfortunately, that major is no longer offered at FVTC.

@Lindsay Pietenpol My introduction was when the US Navy introduced Total Quality Leadership in the early 1990s and I was involved in a quality team as my command's representative. After I left active duty, I worked as a production supervisor for a company that had started on its quality journey using Philip Crosby's Quality Is Free series. I expressed an interest in learning more about it and the plant manager took me to a local section ASQ conference. I joined ASQ afterwards and became the production champion for quality. A few years later, the company created a regional Quality Manager role and I moved into that position. I've had several roles outside quality since then but always maintained a tie to quality concepts (and my ASQ membership), finally coming back to a quality role 16 years ago and staying in the quality function since then.

@Aimee Siegler:
I didn't seek quality, but it found me.

I think many of us followed the same path!

@Lindsay Pietenpol I had just started going to college and I had no idea what to pursue. So one summer I got job at a manufacturing company thinking it was going to be temporary at the time. I had no clue about Quality or that the field even existed to the extent that it does as I wasn't exposed to much of it formally. One day while working, the President of the company was making his rounds and saying hi to everyone and just checking in. He stops by and says I got a Quality Technician position available and I want you to fill it… Years later and now I’m the Quality Manager ?

I can’t think the President enough for the opportunity and exposing me to the field of Quality! It has fit me and my personality so well and I've enjoyed it so much that I can’t imagine working in another field.

@Lindsay Pietenpol it was at my first job, while still in college in 1979, in manufacturing of molds for glass products, quality control was used as a way to identify problems in products only to gain understanding of the risk of sending out unfit product so the production quota could be met. That was an eye-opener and left the wrong impression in the mind of a young engineer. It was not until late 80's that I was asked to gather production data in a manufacturing plant for asphalt coatings that I was immersed into statistical quality control combined with Dr. Deming's approach to quality, from there my thinking was set to believe in the power of using Quality as a long-term money-making strategy. I am now using the Deming principles in helping improve engineering design for a natural gas transmission company.