Hexagon's Shop Floor Social Nashville | Nobody Notices Quality Until It Fails

This bonus episode was recorded live at Hexagon's Shop Floor Social in Nashville — and it did not go the way a typical panel discussion goes.

Jim sat down with Kieth Bieger, Global Metrology Specialist and CMM Programmer at Destaco; Todd Prettyman, Director of Global Quality at Gibson; and Michelle Bangert, Managing Editor of Quality Magazine. The room was full of quality professionals, and that shaped everything.

What started as a conversation about the challenges manufacturers face turned into something more honest than most panels allow. The group covered why quality always takes the blame, why the skills pipeline for quality engineering is broken, why standardization and craftsmanship are not opposites, and what it actually costs to hold the line when nobody's watching.

By the end, the conversation moved into territory that doesn't usually make it onto a stage — psychological safety, the experience of women in manufacturing quality roles, and what the next generation is asking for that the industry hasn't figured out how to give them yet.

This is Part 1 of a two-part live recording. Part 2 — the solutions conversation — releases on The MFG Connector Show.

KEY TOPICS

• Why quality only gets noticed when something fails — and what that costs the people doing the work
• The CMM vs. layout misunderstanding that Kieth has been fighting for 25 years
• Todd's take on why standardization is what enables craftsmanship at Gibson, not what kills it
• Why there's no quality engineering degree — and how that breaks the talent pipeline
• GD&T: who actually understands it, and why it matters more than most shops admit
• Quality as the fall person — the structural reason it keeps happening and what to do about it
• The personality traits that make someone good at quality work, and why they're hard to hire for
• Psychological safety on the shop floor and what happens when it's missing
• The specific experience of women in quality roles — what the panel said out loud that most stages don't
• What Gen Z and Gen Alpha are asking for from manufacturing that the industry hasn't answered yet.

Chapters

• 00:00 — Welcome and introductions
• 02:27 — Panel introductions
• 07:45 — The problems that don't get solved
• 12:00 — Quality takes the blame
• 15:15 — The quality management system conversation
• 17:29 — The skills gap in quality
• 22:00 — Audience questions begin
• 35:00 — Culture as the hardest thing to change
• 38:37 — The conscience of the company
• 41:00 — What it takes to be a good quality engineer
• 46:00 — Psychological safety and women in manufacturing quality
• 49:06 — Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and the new expectations
• 52:49 — Close