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Andrew Zawisza started his career in the military. He had a good quality record and was asked to join the Quality team when he was in the Air Force--“But I didn’t because no one liked the Quality team.” When he left the military, he got a job at DIT-MCO (Kansas City, MO). After working with the company for about 15 years, the director of quality was let go. “And they walked into my office and said, hey, you want to be a quality manager? And I said, ‘Sure.’ I thought it was a trick question. So yeah, so I’ve been doing it ever since then, learning more and more and trying to get better at it.”

Here Zawisza shares his thoughts on how the field has changed, career highlights, and the joys of being on Team Quality.

In your years in quality, how has quality changed? 

To be honest with you, way back when, the quality was, I think, a lot more reactive and not proactive. And in that, I mean, we do a lot more training. I think we did in the past. We do a lot better job of documentation, a lot more detailed in our process, in the process plans.

So I’ve seen a lot of improvements in that area. And it kind of baffles me that we built good stuff years ago, but we did. And so, but I think right now we have a lot better, more detailed reporting and then better work instructions for the employees to do better jobs.

What do you like best about working in the quality field?

What I like best is continual improvements. Obviously, a big part of our job in quality is to do a continual improvement process or projects.

And I think that’s an area where you see the most changes. And then the training. I do a lot of the training in the company. I’m a certified IPC instructor. And so I train employees on soldering and wire harness fabrication. So that’s very enjoyable.

In terms of your career, can you think of your greatest challenge and your greatest highlight so far?

Well, for me personally, I got my bachelor’s degree when I was 40. So my two kids saw me walk down, you know, graduate from college. And so I’m a big proponent of continual education. I try to get my employees who are thinking about going back to school, trying to convince them that, hey, the company’s going to pay for this and this.

And they’re to pay for everything, I think, books included. So that’s a great plus for them. I’m always trying to promote that. For me, especially to get my degree was very important and I enjoy that quite a bit.

Any other professional or personal bucket list things you’re looking forward to?

Well, we had a lot of retirements this year. We’ve had four, five retirements this year, and that was, you know, a hundred years of DIT-MCO experience walking out the door.

One of those retirements was the VP of Operations, and I got assigned his duties of facilities manager. I’ve added that to my plate, so I’m also in charge of facilities at the building, and that’s a new challenge. So having fun with that. It’s kind of stretching me little thinner than I’d like, but yeah, it’s something different, and I enjoy it.

Is there any advice you usually try to give to new quality professionals from your vantage point in the industry?

When we hire people, we always try to tell them about communication. If you have any problems inside the building or outside that’s going to cause issues, talk to me first.

In years prior, I’ve had employees that stopped coming to work and we tried calling them and contacting them. So I tell my employees, if something comes up, something, you know, family emergency, whatever, talk to me, communicate with me, and we’ll figure something out.

We have a good employee, and we want to keep them and help them as much as possible. So that’s what I enjoy also about having the employees work for me, is that they can easily talk to me and not have any issues.