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Andrew Davison is an experienced quality executive with more than 20 years working in the medical device industry. He has performed over 250 audits both domestically and internationally. And he's a senior member of ASQ, holding ASQ certifications in auditing, engineering, and inspection. He's also the ASQ Audit Division chair.

Michelle: You have definitely had an impressive career. Could you tell us how you first became involved in quality?

Andrew: I first became involved when I was working at a manufacturing plant and there was a need for a quality inspector. And one of the managers at the time approached me.

I was working in production and he said, hey, how would you like to be a quality inspector? And I'm like, what does that mean?

So, long story short, I ended up taking the position as a quality inspector, and as that position grew, he needed somebody to go out and perform supplier audits. And this was in the late 80s. So, he asked me if there was interest in doing audits on suppliers, and I said, sure, why not?

The first thing he made me do was to go get certified as a quality auditor through ASQ. And then I started going out, traveling a bit, and performing supplier audits. And I thought, wow, this isn't so bad.

So, that's kind of the genesis of how that happened.

Michelle: Do you remember how the first audit went? Were you very nervous?

Andrew: Yeah. Sometimes people that don't understand that the auditors get just as nervous as the auditees because it's up to us to run the show, right? We've got to come up with all the questions and do the audit report.

And, so, yeah, I was very nervous. And to this day, there's still a little butterflies in the opening meeting. Sometimes when there's all the chief executives there, and you have a table of 15 people, and you're running the opening meeting, yeah, you can get a little nervous. That's. I feel like, good to hear for the people on the other side, for sure.