Looking at it more from an auditing standpoint, if you went into a shop that had 175 production employees, how many quality techs would you expect to see?
To make a little more complicated:
- type of business (automotive, aerospace, medical or commercial)
- does the production process involve laboratory testing
- does the facility include quality planning activities
- how automated is the facility
- what risks are involved with the product
- what is the responsibility level of the production employees (quality checks, lab checks, charting, etc)
- how many customers, are there specific customer requirement
- what responsibilities does the quality staff have (some facilities have QE responsible for control plan,
FMEA, PPAPs, problem solving, other have made these activities process engineering responsibilities)
- what is the culture (inspect quality in, rely on 100% inspection or capable processes)
- is there a lot of rework and who is responsible