Hello Professor, as someone who works as an R&D engineer and has a lot of experience working with the quality department I can relate to the notion of quality as “burden”. After spending so much time working with quality on the day to day tasks, I think it is sometimes easy to forget about the big picture that the quality department represents (as you have described in your post). That being said I do understand the need, purpose, and importance of the Quality department; but I do wish there was more flexibility on lower risk items that could help them be less of a “burden”. For example, product features/performances that pose very little risk to the end user and/or overall functionality of the product, should be treated as such. I think that sometimes because the quality department is driven so much by procedure it often creates complexities for very low risk items which then makes the action items related to the low risk items a burden. There will also be the need for procedures and compliance to the procedures, but there should also be some practicality/reasoning in how we adhere to them.