Setting up a quality department in an Engineering Firm

titan4

Registered
Hie everyone.
Could you please give me some advice and guidance? I have started a new position with a small engineering firm as quality assurance. The company has just been signed off for Iso 9001 and I’ve have been given the task to set up the quality department. The only things set up are the quality procedures. I have only just started allocating numbers to documents as a way of control. I am new to this and any help will be helpful. Thanks guys
 

dsanabria

Quite Involved in Discussions
Hie everyone.
Could you please give me some advice and guidance? I have started a new position with a small engineering firm as quality assurance. The company has just been signed off for Iso 9001 and I’ve have been given the task to set up the quality department. The only things set up are the quality procedures. I have only just started allocating numbers to documents as a way of control. I am new to this and any help will be helpful. Thanks guys

First - learn the ISO processes - lot's of good stuff at the cove. Then sit with management and identify the customers and their needs or requirements, determine management vision and what they are looking for, finally, establish your processes and measure then for indication of effectiveness.

I just gave you six month of information - take one byte at a time...
 

titan4

Registered
First - learn the ISO processes - lot's of good stuff at the cove. Then sit with management and identify the customers and their needs or requirements, determine management vision and what they are looking for, finally, establish your processes and measure then for indication of effectiveness.

I just gave you six month of information - take one byte at a time...
thank you dsanabria,much appreciated .
 

Sidney Vianna

Post Responsibly
Leader
Admin
Hie everyone.
Could you please give me some advice and guidance? I have started a new position with a small engineering firm as quality assurance. The company has just been signed off for Iso 9001 and I’ve have been given the task to set up the quality department.
Sorry, but you are about to make a very common mistake: you don’t need a quality department; you need a Quality function. Quality has to be seamlessly embedded in the organization business processes. Quality has to be a shared responsibility and creating a quality department is the beginning of an archaic path that brings more cons than pros. Rethink your strategy and consider implementing a Quality function without a quality department.

Good luck.
 

Golfman25

Trusted Information Resource
Sorry, but you are about to make a very common mistake: you don’t need a quality department; you need a Quality function. Quality has to be seamlessly embedded in the organization business processes. Quality has to be a shared responsibility and creating a quality department is the beginning of an archaic path that brings more cons than pros. Rethink your strategy and consider implementing a Quality function without a quality department.

Good luck.

Words to live by.
 

Pancho

wikineer
Super Moderator
Re: Setting up a quality department in an Engineering Firm.

As usual, Sidney's advice is it. You need to build quality into your processes. This is done with good documented information and continuous improvement.

The Quality function is not inspection. It is not approval. It is not corrections. It is not training (well, maybe a little of that). Once the initial system is in place, the most important task of the quality function (or whatever you call it) should be to make sure that the continuous improvement process works well. This will allow the organization to learn from experience, good or bad.

In your role, try to make sure that your company's personnel

  1. are empowered to improve the system (that means edit its documents)
  2. continuously capture their knowledge (new or old) into the qms
  3. understand the differences between corrections and improvement actions
  4. know how to log-in and work on corrective and other improvement actions. (The system must be easy to use and everyone should participate.)
  5. recognize that problems, 99% of the time, reveal weaknesses in the system, and not in the individuals doing the work.
 

qualprod

Trusted Information Resource
Sidney
Dont you think that is necessary to explain two issues.
For one side, quality term and concept, ok ,it must exist everywhere, in all the people.
On the other hand, what normally companies do ,it is to have a process with people responsible to approve products to client (quality inspectors) they have knowledge to apply criteria to inspect products, also they know about measurement instruments also their control.
You say this practice, is not useful?
Please clear out this point.
 

Eredhel

Quality Manager
Three are so many things that can fall under what you're asking, but here's one example. One of the old ways of thinking is wait until an order is done and then have quality check a random sampling. That unfortunately is trying to work quality into an already finished thing. In-process inspections instead help make adjustments along the way. But there are even shops where the machinist has more responsibility for acceptance along the way than an inspector, I know of a small (but successful) local shop that has no inspectors and no quality department at all.

A lot of it is going to depend on the context of your organization and how top management wants to get it done.
 

Sidney Vianna

Post Responsibly
Leader
Admin
On the other hand, what normally companies do ,it is to have a process with people responsible to approve products to client (quality inspectors) they have knowledge to apply criteria to inspect products, also they know about measurement instruments also their control.
You say this practice, is not useful?
Firstly, we need to pay attention to the fact that in the case of this specific discussion, the product in question is an engineering design, not the typical piece of hardware that is "inspected" and approved. So, the process of approving a design passes through layers of verification, validation, reviews, etc., which is integral to the actual process of developing a design.

On a broader perspective, product inspection is something that you want to minimize, over time, via robustization of the actual realization processes. You might believe it, or not, but there are progressive organizations that are working very hard to eliminate product inspections from their lines, at the same time they are significantly increasing product performance, reliability and customer satisfaction. For the organizations of the future, inspection will be a thing of the past. :tg:
 
Top Bottom