One of my quality engineering students asked if there was such a thing as internal quality consultants. She seemed surprised when I remarked that she was (or should be) already working as a consultant whether she knew it or not. I went on to explain that my almost half century of work in a Fortune 50 company was spent encouraging quality professionals to enrich their position by assuming a role of internal consultant.
In reality, most people working in a quality role are already doing this, but they just haven’t recognized the connection. For instance, a quality inspector provides machinists and assemblers with on-the-job training about how to determine or ensure the quality of a product. In the performance of their daily tasks, a quality inspector instructs in metrology (handling or using measurement equipment) and interpreting engineering drawings. The concept is to work yourself out of this ‘training’ job as machinists and assemblers become more proficient in self-inspection. The quality inspector then can concentrate on helping to make processes more robust.