I started a new job as Mechanical Engineer at a Body Armor company. It's locally owned and operated, one CEO everyone reports to. Really it's a startup that's just now scaling up and I believe will go really big in the next 3-5 years.

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My background is in Quality and Manufacturing in Aerospace but I got tired of that and wanted to use my background in Fluids/Thermo/Composites so this job was perfect. I am supposed to be in charge of the Autoclaves we've got going. While I am doing that, it's hard for anyone to take me seriously as an engineer because I am stuck doing Standard Operating Procedures, Work Instructions, Quality documents because, like I said, they're scaling up and a mom and pop shop doesn't have these kinds of important processes and documents in place. The deal was that I do that for my first 90 days and then I'd get to be more involved in R&D. I don't trust that.

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The culture there is very laissez faire. The laborers don't care to do more work and I am not their manager, I refuse to micromanage their work. I'm also politically and culturally a little different than them, so I'm outcast there too. No one seems to understand the importance of the things I'm working on except for upper management. Getting any change done on the production floor is a nightmare because they just don't like me or respect the work I am doing because it's not a tangible object.

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I love the job, honestly I do, but changing a culture in a work environment is not going to happen overnight. Has anyone else been the Manufacturing/Quality guy in a startup and how did you win them over? What can I do to get people to respect my knowledge as an engineer and also get them to follow the processes that I know are important?