Member of ASQ for 19 years
Most recent/current job title:
Quality Manager
Current occupation:
Quality Manager
Quality titles held:
Inspector, SPC Coordinator, Quality Engineer, QA Manager, Quality Manager
Certifications held:
CQE
What qualifications do you see as necessary in the new job market?
CQE and or CQA as a minimum. Larger industries value formal Lean and Six Sigma
skill set certification of some sort.
What have you found most rewarding as a member of ASQ and why?
The Tao of Quality
No other field of applied technology provides the wide range of opportunities to
use so many different skills and areas of knowledge. A Quality person may not
only use metrology, statistics, process control, auditing, system planning,
implementation, customer and supplier metrology, quality planning, problem
solving and corrective action. We often need design skills, psychology, group
dynamics, motivational speaking, salesmanship, diplomacy, even aesthetics. We
may find ourselves in a position which demands that 90% of our time is spent
communicating with others performing tasks for us, like a supplier quality
engineer. On the other hand we may find ourselves cloistered deep in a metrology
lab, cranking out data 100% of the time. In my short career I have been involved
with military, aerospace, automotive, appliance and many specialty industries. I
have learned about stamping, 4-slides, springs, milling, molding, plating,
hardening, purchasing, materials planning, accounting, data systems, and many,
many more processes, each with its unique aspects and bodies of knowledge. I
have visited auto plants and other amazing facilities in the USA, Canada and
Mexico. Now, I occasionally travel to work with suppliers in Asia. I have met
saints and demons, slayed dragons and bare the scares of my defeats. Where else
can you have so much fun, live so fully, and get paid for it? The Quality
Profession is like a marvelous river; it has narrow, calm backwaters, wide-open,
smooth water and rushing rapids. Sometimes it cuts a fresh path. Sometimes it
follows old well-worn ways. It is always changing, yet it is always the same. Is
always the river, yet you can never step in the same place twice. Quality is an
analogy for and a metaphor of the way of things, of Life.