For me, a quality professional with 20 years experience in manufacturing—producing everything from garbage bags to luxury ski boats—my transition to the service industry was a shocking experience to say the least. It was not without challenges, I must confess.

When I was asked to join the Goodwill of North Georgia team to develop and implement a quality management system (QMS) that would be certified to ISO 9001, I did so with plenty of anxiety. Quite frankly, I had never even heard of implementing a QMS for such an application as the operations at Goodwill, and I wasn’t even sure it was possible at the time. There are thousands of companies building QMS in compliance to ISO 9001 in the service industry and even nonprofit organizations, but I couldn’t find any that applied their QMS as we would at Goodwill. I couldn’t find any to reference against. From the research I was able to conduct, Goodwill’s criteria for a quality management system was unique.

I want to share this story to inspire others to use the tools, skills, and resources that are already ingrained in the quality engineering job function to take on the challenge of developing and implementing their own QMS. 

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