Zlatica is a Senior Validation Engineer at Bristan Group Ltd. She has worked at Bristan for 18 years and has been in her current role for 2 and a half years.
Zlatica’s day-to-day responsibilities in her role are:
- Working closely with Design, procurement and suppliers to deliver new products from the pre-tooling stage through to production.
- Ensuring projects are delivered on time, products meet correct specification and quality, pass appropriate testing and comply to relevant standards. Driving continual improvement with new and current products.
- Working with other functions to investigate design quality concerns and improvements to the products.
- Internal audits at Bristan UKAS-accredited test laboratory.
Although I studied to become an accountant, I‘ve never joined the finance world. “I first came across quality and product manufacturing when I was offered a quality inspector job at a brand new factory opened by a Malaysian company in my city in Slovakia. It was plastic injection moulding for Panasonic products.”
“Although I haven’t got a clue what it was about, I quickly found the passion for quality and manufacturing and progressed to a supervisor role.”
After I came to the UK in 2005, I had a couple of jobs to settle in. “I joined Bristan in August 2007 as Quality admin assistant. Being foreign, the terms used in the bathroom industry were completely unknown to me. I was a young, foreign ‘bird’ at the time, so completely different to anybody else around me. But I was very keen to understand the bathroom world and do my best.”
“I kept asking lots of questions. I felt no question was stupid or awkward for me to ask, I was taking products apart and being genuinely curious about how things work and why. I wasn’t faltered by the fact that they were all male around me and making joking comments. Maybe because being foreign, it automatically predetermines me to certain biases, being a woman in male male-dominated industry does not affect me as much. My motto was and still is, just get on with it!”
My career progressed kind of naturally throughout the years. “In 2013 after my return from second maternity leave, I applied for a Supplier Quality Assurance engineer role, and then in February 2023 I moved to my current role. During my time with Bristan, I have been fortunate to have opportunities to go through training to gain more experience. I’ve had numerous opportunities to travel and to experience different manufacturing sites and mentalities.”
I’ve built strong relationships around me and found male and female allies that support me, and I can rely on. “I feel I’m being respected and treated as equal. However, being a woman has been a challenge when dealing with suppliers on certain occasions. I remember a particular case when an exclusively male quality team would completely disregard our quality concerns, not believing we had faulty products in stock that we couldn’t sell.”
“Until I invited them over and laid down the faulty products in front of them to prove them wrong. I also invited their own parts supplier and worked with them to put it right. (It was furniture, so I had to do some heavy lifting too!)”
During my time at Bristan, I’ve definitely seen a shift in how women are treated for the better. “This happened mostly with the change of management over the years. Having a female CEO and being part of CIC has definitely had an impact and opened a more encouraging environment for women.”
