How to Calculate Quality Department Resources?

[scotdail]

I am working on a resource plan for the quality department in FY 2008. I know I need work in Supplier Quality Improvement, Process Quality Engineers, PPAP / AQP, quality technicians on the shop floor, limited incoming inspection, and certainly customer support. What I am unsure of is where to start on calculating how many resources I need for each of these activities.

Anyone use or develop a tool for helping determine the resource needs for your quality department?

 

[Jim Wynne]

I am working on a resource plan for the quality department in FY 2008. I know I need work in Supplier Quality Improvement, Process Quality Engineers, PPAP / AQP, quality technicians on the shop floor, limited incoming inspection, and certainly customer support. What I am unsure of is where to start on calculating how many resources I need for each of these activities.

Anyone use or develop a tool for helping determine the resource needs for your quality department?

In general, the best way to justify the addition of resources is to calculate or estimate the amount of time necessary to perform the tasks at hand, and then look at the amount of time being spent by current employees at present. If you have (for example) 100 hours of work per week that must be done to support the new requirements, and only 30 hours available from existing staff, there are 70 hours worth of work that won't get done (or will be done half-arsed) without some additional help, or some sort of greater efficiency.

 

[Stijloor]

I am working on a resource plan for the quality department in FY 2008. I know I need work in Supplier Quality Improvement, Process Quality Engineers, PPAP / AQP, quality technicians on the shop floor, limited incoming inspection, and certainly customer support. What I am unsure of is where to start on calculating how many resources I need for each of these activities.

Anyone use or develop a tool for helping determine the resource needs for your quality department?

Hello scotdail,

Jim provided an excellent example of how to calculate resources.

You also may want to assess how much work is being performed by the Quality Department that does not add value. In addition, how much work is being done by your department that should be performed by other departments? Sometimes we're busy for the wrong reasons. Good luck with identifying the necessary resources and establishing your budget.

Stijloor.

 

[scotdail]

Yes, that is pretty much the way I am going about this, Jim, crunching it out on spreadsheets.

Stijlour makes a good point also - process mapping, and studying the non-valued added activity is a vital way to assure resources are being used most effectively. We often get into battles on the latter part, as to who is actually responsible for what improvement activity? For example, when a supplier sends in parts which are discrepant, is it the responsiblity of Supply Management or Quality to correct the issue? If there are assembly mistakes being made, it this the responsiblity of Production, Production Engineering, or Quality to correct?

The logical answer seems to be that Quality has the most technical expertise to drive the continuous improvement process, and must work with those other functional concerns to drive improvement. Unfortuantely, this often results in our group getting "stuck" with the whole article, if the responsible area is not committed to fixing the issue, and are resource constrained. This is a management concern, obviously, but creates some complexity in defining the total resource requirement from our Quality group.