In my organization there is no separate budget for Q.A.

You're not unique!

From my perspective I'll bet QA is identified as a burden, a non-value added process and so on. Correct?

So what do you want or need to know?

Randy-

I want to either have ammunition for when we bring this up with top management or know that this is the norm and I can go crawl back under my rock.

-John

Then perform those actions necessary to show that QA is not a cost burden but an investment with expectation of return. Focus on preventive as opposed to corrective actions (you still have to identify broke stuff, but try to identify it before it breaks).

When you report on your activities to management try to put information into a format that will be understood, create a desire to get involved and will bring you up to the same level as other activities....$

In my organization there is no separate budget for Q.A.

Ditto. Everything except my salary has to be authorised by my middle management superior.

Ditto. Everything except my salary has to be authorised by my middle management superior.
Don;t know why, but this hit my funny bone....I am the middle management superior, and I still don't have a budget.:lmao:

Gees... I am the Quality Department....and I have a credit card :notme:

Does that count???:lmao:

I guess I should be more to the point.

Whenever my department gets swamped (which is often) the response from top management is to throw more people at me. I don't want more warm bodies, I want to provide better tools to the talented people I already have in order to improve our productivity. I can't seem to convince my boss's bosses that down here in the trenches we know what we need and would prefer to have the discretion to take the resources (monetary) being expended on the aforementioned warm bodies and have the discretion to allocate those resources to invest in equipment to improve not only our productivity but also our range of capabilities.

Am I making any sense?

In our company,quality dept. has independent budget every month.

Instead of all the budget stuff, why not show them in a spread sheet how new equipment can speed up your processes and save money and avoid the mad rush. If they say nada, keep the information handy for the next "emergency".:bonk:

budget? :lmao:
There's been no dedicated QA/QC budget in any place I've worked.

But I am pushing the owner of my current place give me one for expenses - calibration, gaging, tools, etc so we don't need him to sign off on every single PO.

I guess I should be more to the point.

Whenever my department gets swamped (which is often) the response from top management is to throw more people at me. I don't want more warm bodies, I want to provide better tools to the talented people I already have in order to improve our productivity. I can't seem to convince my boss's bosses that down here in the trenches we know what we need and would prefer to have the discretion to take the resources (monetary) being expended on the aforementioned warm bodies and have the discretion to allocate those resources to invest in equipment to improve not only our productivity but also our range of capabilities.

Am I making any sense?

you are making perfect sense. I'd rather pay $20.00 an hour for an experienced inspector/technician who can step right into the job and increase the department's overall skills, then $10.00 each for 2 people who have never held a caliper or read a blueprint.

In fact I just went in that direction and hired two very experienced inspectors selling their higher cost as an investment in the department/company's future growth and efficiency.

Hmmm - in my prior job, as the lab supervisor for Mechanical Testing & Metallography, my annual budget was $1.3 million. If I wanted new/improved equipment I had to justify it through our budgetary process for those items - I probably averaged an additional $150,000 annually for new/improved equipment. The mill called the position part of the Quality Assurance department - our ISO/QS-9000 systems were under the Quality Systems heading.

I tracked lab productivity and testing cost and averaged a 5% decrease in cost per coil, and 5 % productivity increase per year during my tenure in the position. The testing cost decrease was maintained even though due to product shift/expansion we were running more tests per coil at the end of my stay there than at the beginning.

We define the budget at the end of each year for the following year with the proposed monetary amounts. Throughout the year the purchases are made as and when required. A certain amount is placed aside for incidentals that might come up unexpectedly. At the end of the year we provide evidence that what was planned for purchase was purchased on time and within budget.

We don't seem to have a budget. I suppose there really is one, but since they don't tell me what it is, I just keep buying (nothing major) util they tell me stop. To prevent my termination, major purchases are done only with senior management approval.
Overall, I can't worry too much about it since our purchasing department does most of the work and we don't know how much we're paying for things. For normal items, it's their decision on where to get it cheapest. I specify a vendor when possible, especially for technical items.

In one case, I remember that we paid an excesive amount for the Metrology Handbook because we bought it from a gage distributor. That company in turn just got it off Amazon, got free shipping to them, then charged us a nice premium plus shipping!

We'd save a lot of money if I had a set budget and made the decisions what was needed and where we'd buy it from.

We have some QA dept. budget and the rest is supported by the functional area concerned via their own budget, though the exact budgetary figures are not made public. This gets us into a situation, where the functional areas perceive that 'quality costs money' and since they usually run short of money (time and resources) they end up resisting the quality initiatives and/or process improvements.

I am wondering if the poll options could be expanded to include more scenarios.

I Am Preparing My Budget / Plan For The Year 2008 - For Quality Department. Need To Present It To Management Next Week To Get Approval.

Sridhar

Hello,
My company does't have it's own buget for quality we need to get the ok from the company president to buy anything. I also agree I would rather pay for the experience in a inspector then a person I have to babysit all day.
:frust:

We have our own budget within a larger department budget (QA is part of "Technical Services" here). Every year I have the joyful task of helping prepare the budget, researching what new toys I want to ask for, and proposing it to the boss if the new toy is really expensive. We always have certain items in, like calibration, ISO surveillance audits, etc.

Our lab is a part of the quality department...at least my boss is the quality manager:notme:

We're pretty well self sufficient. We do the testing for our plant and other plants within the organization. We charge them for the testing, they send us a P.O. (funny money) and that goes into our budget. We use that money to supply the lab.

Works well for us and keeps us busy and well stocked:cool: