An interview with Jason Baliga, Operations Quality Manager at Teledyne ev2 Space Imaging
Q: Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Teledyne ev2
I am Operations Quality Manager within Space Imaging at Teledyne e2v. I joined the team in 2021 and I work predominantly in quality management and overseeing the infrastructure of our business. My role involves overseeing all the clean room operations and supporting our various processes to standardise products and ensure that the manufacturing environment remains fit for purpose. In this work, I not only support our standard customers, but project teams who need more in-depth or specialist solutions. We are a small team of two people, who also manage internal audits in line with our ISO 9001 standards requirements, in collaboration with the business excellence team.
Q: Do you cover the whole complex and all the buildings, or mainly the clean rooms?
A: It's mainly the clean rooms and the processes which we perform within them. These vary from wafer fabrication backfilling to post processing and assembly. I work alongside our equipment engineers and manufacturing teams to maintain quality. We also liaise with subject matter experts in the field, such as verification and testing engineers, to ensure that what we're doing meets requirements not only for our own production protocols, but also customer-specific requirements. There are always a few little add-ons ad hoc adjustments that need to be done.
We see ourselves as a support function and are in constant communication with all of the other teams. I regularly liaise with the product assurance, verification and testing teams to ensure that we don't just remove a piece of equipment, for example, to replace it with something new, for the sake of it. We may have agreed to use that equipment specifically to fulfil a customer product order and therefore have to continue using it while their project is still ongoing.
Q: Why is it important for all the clean rooms to be kept up to a certain standard? Is that because if they're not, you're not allowed to operate?
Yes, We have strict controls with regards to electrostatic discharge, or ESD. We must ensure the clean rooms are kept at a certain temperature and humidity to ensure we get the best protection. All clean room staff are trained by me and my team around the area of ESD control measures.
As humans, we generate up to 20,000 volts per day, just by moving around, shuffling across the floor. We've all experienced ESD when we have touched a door handle, for example. Our devices are so sensitive, however, that coming into contact with as little as five volts can destroy them and the products they are creating. So, we have to be very strict regards to controlling temperature, moisture etc. to reduce the likelihood of ESD.
Q: How do you prevent ESD?
A: Everyone who works in our clean rooms wear ESD-controlled suits. We all have to go through a strict process of putting on our suits, ensuring that we are earthed and grounded at all times. Any time we operate anything on the workbench, we have to plug ourselves in via a wrist strap that takes the electrical charge away from us and dissipates it down to the ground so that it doesn't affect the products. We also have to have strict controls to prevent particles in the air. Any small particle that gets into a device can potentially render it unusable. Just one small speck of dust that attaches to a sensor looking out into deeper space can potentially block the focal plane or focal array.
My team and I have all had initial training, plus refreshers every year on ESD and other things. We follow what we call 'Six S' training, which is basically a 'good housekeeping' exercise. We learn how to ensure that the area is kept clean at all times and unused products, devices, equipment and tools are stored away where they belong. It's all about doing anything we can possibly do to minimise any kind of contaminants, whether they are particulates, molecular or airborne, and to protect our products and devices from damage.
Q: You also have another important role at Teledyne e2v, helping to support the physical and mental wellbeing of your colleagues. Tell us about that.
I've recently taken on the chairman role of the DEIB Committee (Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity and Belonging). Our aim is to oversee what the business is doing to encourage and promote activities that fall under those four main headings. We do this by organising a series of monthly wellbeing events that are designed to foster community spirit across the entire site.
As Chairman, I look after the overall umbrella committee. Under that we have a Charities Committee that supports our chosen charity of the year, as well as our Women in Teledyne Committee and our Mental Health First Aid function. We work closely with senior HR employees who are driving this initiative across other Teledyne sites, including our counterparts in the United States. We try to align our events across all our sites so that everyone can take part if they choose to and enjoy the experience together.
A recent initiative that I led at our site was aimed at trying to cheer people up in January. It's generally quite a low month for people. Everyone's heard of Blue Monday, so I decided to promote Red January instead. This is a national event which promotes health and wellbeing. We have been offering people the opportunity to have medical checks at work, free of charge, with our onsite nurse.
Other events have included twice-weekly walks to help people's physical and mental health. We had a smoothie bike challenge, in which we had a couple of smoothie bikes come into the business and people were sitting there, pedalling away to make their own smoothies. On the same day, we had a healthy menu in in the company restaurant for people to try if they wanted to.
Q: How do you align your day-to-day role and your work with the DEIB Committee and all the other groups that sit within that?
I am very mindful that operations quality management is my day-to-day remit and I have to keep that ticking over. However, I make sure that I also have enough capacity to look after the wellbeing side of things and to bring us together as a community on site. It is so important to make sure that people feel part of the community and that we can show people outside the business, that we are a supportive, inclusive employer who looks after our employees.
Mental Health First Aid is a key part of my work and something I am passionate about. We have a dedicated team of about ten individuals who have volunteered themselves to become trained mental health first aiders. They are available for people to talk to informally about life worries or work concerns and to ask for help and resources. Or simply to be there is someone wants to vent or simply spend half an hour having a chat.
We're not qualified experts in mental health. What we can do, however, is support fellow colleagues who are experiencing issues such as grief, money worries or general work-life balance problems. We offer our services to people in complete confidence so that they don't feel worried about talking about personal worries in a work setting.
If we feel that someone might need more help than we can offer, we have lists of support groups, counsellors etc. that we can use to point people in the right direction. We take this role extremely seriously and have had situations where we have been able to help someone come out the other side of their particular issue and get positive help from their manager, their colleagues and external support.
Q: This is a very important part of your role at Teledyne e2v. It's good to spread the word about it.
A: Absolutely. I wanted to talk about it to show anyone who might be interested in joining us that we have this focus on DEIB, mental health and wellbeing. We have a support network in place to look after our staff and encourage them to grow and seek out ways to fulfil their aspirations and goals in life. We do offer excellent job opportunities in an exciting, fulfilling area of space, but we also want to provide a supportive, inclusive working environment. That is very important to me personally, too.
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