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Your Company's Quality Department Staff Strength

Discussion in 'ISO 9001:2015 - Quality Management Systems' started by QualMama, Aug 12, 2019.

  1. QualMama

    QualMama New Member

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    Hi folks. I am new to the forum. This seems like a great resource!

    I want to take a poll. Please let me know how many employees there are in your company as a whole, how many employees there are in your quality department, and how many hours your quality people typically work in a week.

    I am having issues here with not enough staffing, but not getting the support from behind to increase my department. Thank you!
     
  2. Qualmx

    Qualmx Well-Known Member

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    There several issues around here.
    There are companies which the quality department Is composed by qms coordinator, quality engineer, quality inspector, quality Manager, I don't know how your company is.
    In my company, print shop, 60 employees, 1 quality inspector, one qms system half time coordinator and that's all, both under the general director.
    Other type of business, manufacturing, more people, capacity for sure Will need More people, e.g. quality manager, quality engineers and so on.
     
  3. Katrijn

    Katrijn Member

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    transport and logistics company. In total about 800 people working on different sites, some even in other countries.
    1 SHEQ coordinator, working part time...
     
  4. RoxaneB

    RoxaneB Moderator Staff Member

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    Welcome.

    Your question has no right answer - there are too many variables to consider including, to name but a few:
    • Size of the company/location
    • Industry
    • Applicable standard(s)
    • Maturity of existing management system culture
    • Role of the staff - Quality can encompass many activities - versus what other staff are doing
    It can be frustrating not having the staffing levels you believe are needed to effectively add value to the organization, however, how are you selling the idea of expanding the team. If you're simply saying "I need more people", management won't support. If you're able to explain the plan behind the team, how they add value and how they will essentially "pay for themselves", then management might be willing to listen.
     
  5. Andy Nichols

    Andy Nichols Moderator Staff Member

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    As RoxaneB says, there's no "right answer". You can however, make a case for people to be added, if that's what's really needed. Be certain, first, that the people you want to add are actually necessary. A good friend of mine tells a story where someone in his company wanted to add several people to get on top of a (seasonally driven) backlog of work. His analysis showed that as much as 80% of the work being done was totally unnecessary, even without the seasonal variation. In fact there was ZERO risk to the organization in not doing this huge amount of work! Imagine what would have happened by adding more staff to do work which was totally unnecessary!

    If you can assure your management that the work IS necessary and that by NOT doing it, there's increased risks ($$$) you can quantify that (using examples of customer feedback, rework, reprocessing, for example) to do a cost comparison/projection.
     
  6. Quality Guy

    Quality Guy Member

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    I agree with the responses above as well. You say that you are under staffed? Is this because inspectors simply can not get to product to inspect it? Or is it a case of too many defective products making it out the door to a customer? I think some numbers that reflect those two issues should be gathered first. Internal rejects versus returned goods analysis type analysis. Obviously you would not prefer either one, but I would like to see the internal number higher than the returned goods number. This means that you are capturing issues in house at the very least. Then you may may be able to zero in a little bit more to see if you are truly under staffed or if more training is needed in other areas.