Like most quality professionals, I did not start out looking at it as a profession. I was trained as an industrial engineer. I worked at the industrial engineering department in a major company and the product quality department and industrial engineering department were under the same vice president. Looking at the relative salaries between the two groups, this vice president was surprised at how much more the industrial engineers were paid than the critical-to-the-company product quality employees.
As one of the youngest industrial engineers, I was asked if I would do a trial stint in the product quality department. As I’ve always been willing to try new things I agreed. The product quality employees were the only people in the firm who had veto power over new product developments. In this environment, I coined the phrase “quality people are the devils amidst the angels.”