K
How in the world did I get here....
It was 24 years ago 5/11 (a little Beatles twist) that I walked into our plant at 10:30pm along with 11 others. Our mission was to earn a paycheck, not launch a career. I guess everyone else listened because by the third night I was the only one left from the group. Who knew?
During that time I've worked production, set-up, maintenance, prototype, quality, and a little supervision. I've run thermoformers, tenoners, tape routers, gang saws, multi-drills, presses and programmed ASEA robots to do things they were never intended to do. I've laughed, cried, bled (too many times, but I still have ten digits) swore and generally enjoyed myself.
To which I can give you one simple answer about how I got into quality. I got traded! (at least that's what I was told). We were originally (lab) part of R&D. Yeah, we did all the testing for the quality department for the products we produced, but we also did quite a bit of research testing so they stuck us in that group.
About three years ago, my boss quit along with his two techs. Goodbye R&D. Three weeks later, the lab manager takes disability for health reasons. So our department went from six to two. So, we split the manager responsibilities between us and kept on going. Well, someone decided we needed a boss, so they stuck us with QA. Happy Land as we like to call it.
Gee, thanks JRKH. Thought the mind would block everything out after all these years. Maybe I'm being punished or maybe I am just a mascochist...

Huh? Quality management? What's that?
Happy to hear from you!