Texas Quality Assurance

For those that don’t know me, I’m Kyle Chambers, Founder of Texas Quality Assurance. I’ve lived my entire life in Texas, raised in the small town of Italy Texas, pronounced “It-Ly” for those of you that don’t know. My degree is in Management Information Systems, I got my CompTIA A+ certification in the 8th grade, safe to say I’m a Geek. Many years ago I was volunteered to start a Health and Safety program for the company I was working at. See I had been at a hospital doing help desk work and we all agreed it was NOT for me. So I started at this small Gas Turbine Repair company. Within the first year I had their IT needs more than met, website rebuilt and pretty much had worked myself out of a job-not a good position to be in for a newly wed man with a little 6 month old boy at home. I prayed on what to do and later volunteered to get ISO 9001 and OHSAS 18001 certified in less than 12 months. I quickly found myself working incredible hours, all 7 days of the week. By now we had two little boys at home and this life was not working for a family. I knew something had to change, and had to change fast. I took the weekend off, spent time with the family, thought about it, and knew what I was going to do. I marched right into my VP’s office that Monday and told him I was going to take two weeks to shut my door, lock it and unplug the phone. Two weeks later I emerged with the first early version of what would later become TQA-Cloud. I recall early on when I was working in my new position as “QHSE” Coordinator (catch that, the E was added to QHS) when I completed a Corrective Action Report I would wind up with 3 photo copies of the same ugly Excel spreadsheet made to look like a Word doc. Each had notes from the person that completed one aspect or another. It might take me thirty minutes to an hour minutes just to retype, print, assemble, scan, load, and log a CAR. That’s not to mention the countless times I had to call, text, and email the supervisor to get the report completed. When I went live with my first version of a cloud based QMS, I issued a CAR that morning to one production supervisor who admittedly only logged into the computer once a year to sign off on his insurance paperwork electronically. Seeing as I was also the Systems Admin, I had verified it was true, he NEVER logged in, not once in the past 9 months. Much to my surprise within 1 hour of issuing the CAR I got an email from the system informing me the CAR had been completed. I just assumed I’d made a mistake in one of my workflows or filters or who knows what. After pouring through all the geek logs and code, I just decided to open up the CAR. Turns out he’d received the notification on his phone, filled in every field, even attached photos he took with his phone, and took a photo of his completed inspection report. The fact is that people, even seemingly technology deficient people who cannot even be bothered to log into their computer, CAN engage in something soooo dull as a Corrective Action Report when you build easy to use tools that make sense to the company, process, and people. Not long after this a consultant we were loosely using was amazed at the simplicity and detail of our system. He had a client that was API Q1 and 6A certified. As you know, if you lose your stamp, you pretty much lose your business. He was given a 60 day ultimatum to get onto an electronic file system. This unnamed client had more file cabinets than I’d ever seen-full of binder upon binder, and 3-4 partially functional computers in the office. I really have no idea how they got things done but they did. I showed up when 47 days were left. So, it was off to the races to not only build a QMS from scratch, but build a server to go with it. Today we use Office 365 as our backbone, but it didn’t exist back then. With 6 days left till his next audit, we got him going. As they say, the rest is history. It’s a lot of hard work, prayer, struggle and innovation. But, I feel truly blessed to be doing what I’m doing and thank God for the opportunity to do it. It’s not about the QMS, its all about saving time and energy for what matters most to you. Maybe that is a passion project at the office, maybe you just want to get home in time to see your son’s little league game, or maybe you’re crazy enough to quit a job in search of a dream so others can pursue their own, too. Texas Quality Assurance: www.TexasQA.com | Tel: (281)756-7316 LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | GETTR | YouTube – Products and Services: | QMS Software | Consultation | FQM | Auditing #QualityMatters podcast is streaming on: iTunes | Spotify | Google | Audible | Stitcher | TuneIn