It’s one thing trying to squeeze a week, or even two weeks worth of work, into a couple of hours during the day, but it’s another story trying to squeeze six months of work into two days. Let me explain.
As part of my job as the Director of Quality/Metallurgy for the company I work for, and the part I hate the most, simply because it is something I have no training in, and little experience with, I am responsible for the companies adherence to certain quality standards, principally AS9100.
And every year about this time we are due for our annual audit, by an outside registrar who we pay dearly for the privilege. We do this, because virtually all our customers require we maintain our AS9100 registration, as a condition for doing business with them, and as an indication of our commitment to producing a quality, cost effective product.
For the most part, it’s not that difficult to comply with all the requirements, but there are a lot of, what in mixed company I like to call non value added requirements, which are difficult to maintain on a daily basis, especially when you consider they really are non value added.
So consequently I/we (the company) spends the week prior to the audit, trying to get caught up with everything we were supposed to keep up with during the entire year. And such was the case with the past two days.
Fortunately I have some great people working for me, and the majority of the other employees have finally come to understand the importance of complying with these requirements, regardless of their feelings about them. In addition, we have hired an AS9100 consultant, who has been able to guide us [especially me] in how to more easily comply with these requirements.
Still, old habits are hard to break (never do today what you can put off until tomorrow), and this is a stressful time of the year me, but after working two full days, getting all our ducks in order, I think we are more prepared for our audit next Tuesday and Wednesday, than we have been for any other audit we have gone through in the past.
So I’m taking the rest of the week off, to do some bike riding, and forget about all this non value added stuff until next week.
