Why This Blog?

My first post here I'll explain why I've decided to establish this blog.  I'm not really anyone noteworthy so it's not that I think I am.  I have, however, been employed by a supplier to the nuclear power industry since 1979 as a Quality Assurance professional so have learned a thing or two along the way.  Guess you could say this old dog wants to make sure all the bones don't stay burried after I'm gone.

While my work in nuclear QA has always been filled with chapter & verse quotations of requirements to explain why things could or could not be done, this blog will be more opinionated and informal in nature.......and I think that will be quite fun for a change!

So a quick bit about me before the opinions begin to roll.  I started my job in 1979 as a secretary in the QA department of a brand new plant built to supply raw material for nuclear fuel assemblies.  When I started my job I didn't know the first thing about quality assurance or the nuclear industry.  In fact I'm quite sure I had no idea the business even was part of the nuclear industry at first (ditto for most of the employees originally hired at the place - it just wasn't talked about much early on).  I did know good grammar, spelling and office procedures having had a business minor in college and a few years' experience as an executive secretary and assistant office manager.  I was only 25 - and female - but not about to let anyone bamboozle me with quality hocus pocus.  As I began to type up the zillions of procedures that were being written for how to do various tasks within the plant, I think I drove the engineers, managers and other authors quite crazy asking what unfamiliar words meant.  Then as I began to have to re-type (yes, this was in the days before word processing!) procedures that didn't get approved by management, I quickly began to understand the procedure topics so as to be able to help the authors avoid rejection.  It was interesting and fun learning.  Some authors did not appreciate my help, but most did.

As we started manufacturing product, our customers began to schedule quality assurance audits to make sure we were meeting their requirements.  Every audit involved whether we were working in compliance with the procedures I had been so dutifully typing up.  Soon, the Quality Assurance Manager found that no one could answer questions better than me about which procedure covered which topic, where and what it said specifically.  Thus, a year later I was promoted from Sr. Secretary to Audit Coordinator.

I met so many people from all over the world.  They all taught me things about the requirements of being a supplier to the nuclear industry.  Some became pretty good friends.    

Through answering audit findings, I fell into the world of corrective actions.  I first learned that it was required and expected that you could prove that you really did what you said you did when you explained how you fixed an audit finding.  Some sort of formal objective evidence had to be generated which would then be used as a defense by people to prevent the mistake from happeneing again.  After that I learned that if the fix wasn't good enough, the problem most likely would happen again.

I was a lead auditor for the corporation (not just my plant) for over 25 years.  I mostly audited sub-suppliers but eventually decided to let my qualification lapse because the corporate audits always seemed to conflict with something else that was a higher priority for me to get done at my plant.

About 10 years ago, a new electronic Corrective Action System (CAPs) was adopted by my corporation and I was appointed to be the manager of it at my plant simply because of my experience with nuclear QA audits.  However, the CAPs process involved all aspects of the business where an event needed correction.  My eyes were opened to the worlds of environment, health & safety; maintenance; accounting and so on.  I was soon trained as an Apparent Cause Analyst to lead investigations of events and then became an Apparent Cause Analyst trainer for the corporation.  I came to understand and enjoy the development of why trees as a pictorial flow of why an event occurred.

When I began my career in nuclear QA in 1979, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred.  There were many years when we were not sure the nuclear industry would survive in part because of that accident.  We are now in the midst of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant failure from a horrific earthquake and tsunami that occurred in March, 2011.  It will be interesting to see where that situation takes the nuclear industry next.