The QIC – Quality Interview Chain is growing! My pleasure to present today Pam Schodt, Certified Quality Engineer with more than 10 years of experience in supervision, corporate communications, customer service, handling quality complaints, and marketing. Enjoy and learn from her experience.
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* YOURSELF / OCCUPATION: Who are you and what you do?
I’m Pam Schodt, a certified Quality Engineer, and member of the Raleigh, North Carolina, Chapter of ASQ. I coordinate Eventbrite sites and social media for chapter events. Currently, I’m not working for a company, but I’m about to complete the most important project ever: I’ve been raising twin sons and they will be entering college in August!
* CHALLENGES: What was the biggest challenge you faced in your job and how did you handle it?
One exciting challenge in my job with Burlington Knits arose with a yarn supplier. There’s a condition called immature cotton. It’s caused by weather conditions during the cotton plant’s growth and makes the cotton dye resistant. Light colors and whites look normal, but medium and dark colors have white specs. The challenge is that this is an invisible problem until the fabric is manufactured and dyed. We had just started production on a huge fabric program for an upscale retailer. Royal blue fabrics were sprinkled with white specs. My quality service team and I stopped production so we could trace suspect supplier yarns through our fabric lots. Suspect yarns/fabrics were rerouted into light and white colors. “Safer” fabric lots were routed into the medium and dark colors. Ultimately, we still lost some production because of excessive defects, but the loss was minimized by backtracking yarn sources.
It took a tremendous amount of supplier production research and coordination with manufacturing logistics.
* CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT: What are you doing to ensure you continue to grow and improve as a professional and/or as a person?
I consider myself a lifelong learner. The Raleigh Chapter of ASQ schedules tours, workshops, and speakers for professional growth. In May they hold a conference with workshops that I plan on attending. I’m also a regular viewer of the ASQ Standards Channel videos and ASQ webcasts. The Raleigh-Durham area has several biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms so I took continuing education classes in Biotech and cGMP. A few years ago I earned a certificate in Web Technology. I’ve taken many courses in social media, e-publishing, and web content writing. Currently, I’m taking a course to update my Microsoft Office skills and to become more familiar with Windows 8.
* QUALITY QUOTE: Which is your favorite quality quote?
“Quality means doing it right when no one is looking” by Henry Ford
* FREE TIME: In your free time, what do you like to do to relax?
In my free time, I like to enjoy nature. I spend a lot of time outdoors taking photos and gardening.
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Thank you so much PAM SCHODT for being part of this project. I appreciate your time and effort!
