Freelance Quality Control

For a few months I worked as a freelance quality control consultant for an American start up called BoomYa Inc. Eugene, a friend of mine from early in my stay in China, was associated with this business and needed some help appraising manufacturers and designs and things like that.

My role was as an contracted consultant and in meetings I would always introduce myself as a QC person although the actual work I did for the company also involved some design consulting. My involvement included working on the following tasks:

1. Visiting many manufacturers with a company representative and later with the owner with an aim to come to a manufacturing agreement and establish an understanding of the expected and required quality standards;
2. Assessing manufacturing facilities and methods to aid development of a production pipeline;
   
3. Addressing quality issues in production lines of future products;
4. Offering design consulting to optimize product cost efficiency and marketability.

This project was a great experience for me in many ways. I learnt a huge amount not only about working with companies and meeting their expectations but also about how people in this context are lenient in certain ways that one may not expect. I was continually amazed by how much simple things that I knew could be useful to other people. Information that I thought was common in an industry setting became decision changing on a number of occasions which was an interesting responsibility.

As well as the working experience I was exposed to some of the innovation common to Chinese manufacturers including making EDMs out of old end mills and some of their ingenious ways of carrying large payloads on bicycles.

I also realized that presenting and communicating well makes a huge difference. During one meeting I quickly mocked up a Maya model to demonstrate how we wanted a part made and the manufacturers thought this was the best thing since fried rice. My model was simple and but it served in ways that no sketch or words could have.

Toward the end of my work for this company I was asked to make a judgment call that may have destroyed the future of the company. I thought for awhile and eventually came up with an answer but I was really reluctant to do so because I was relatively nervous that my lack of experience would cause a long term problem or bankruptcy. In the end it seems to have turned out fine. The company has not yet gone into full production as they are having some issues their engineering department in the States.