Appropriate level of QA staff

Good morning all:

My company is going through a serious restructuring and the CEO has asked me to give him a justification for my whole QA department along with an "industry standard" for QA staffing.
I am already working on the justification but I wonder if there are any industry standards regarding staffing levels for a QA department, I've never seen any such but I'm hoping you have or may make recommendations?

For context, we are a 287 people company with 2 manufacturing sites and we produce large electrical products, there is zero automation, it's all hand assembled which requires physical and visual inspection (working on getting some automation which will lessen the need for inspection).

At both sites I have a QA manager, a supervisor and 5 inspectors so a total of 12 people plus myself.

Any help will be super appreciated!!!

I went through this exercise around 10 years ago, and there are simply too many variables and a lack of available data. The number of employees and plants obviously can have an impact on the number of quality personnel, but so does the number of different processes, their complexity, propensity for defects, maturity of the QMS, handwork vs. automation, operator experience/turnover, age of equipment, etc.

I am surprised that you have no quality engineers.

Do you have large customers of over 10-15% of revenue? I would start with those SQA and MSA documents to see their feedback. they may have specific requirements for you to meet but its possible nothing is mentioned.

Without anything like that would look at volume of quality work. In process fallout, returns, receiving, new development you have. Are there QA members with specific education or experience you must keep on staff?

At the end of the day though the QA group arrived at its headcount organically. Either something wasn't getting done in time or a new project required a change etc. Trying to crystalball an industry standard is just a guess.

Perhaps create a list of ALL THE WORK the QA team delivers and push this back to the CEO and ask what areas he's willing to add risk to?

I keep track of a number of variables and report them into the Management Review Meetings, things like number of in-process inspections per day/hr, number of FPI's (for each process requiring them), number of final inspections, CoC's, PSI's, etc. This way management can never ask me "why do you need so many people?", they have all the info in front of them at every meeting, if they want to reduce inspection, they can tell me how they propose to do that. So far, "crickets"....

hogheavenfarm said:

I keep track of a number of variables and report them into the Management Review Meetings, things like number of in-process inspections per day/hr, number of FPI's (for each process requiring them), number of final inspections, CoC's, PSI's, etc. This way management can never ask me "why do you need so many people?", they have all the info in front of them at every meeting, if they want to reduce inspection, they can tell me how they propose to do that. So far, "crickets"....

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This is a great point, I do have that data and will report it. Thanks

I am a firm believer in transitioning from inspectors to quality engineers. Every time I had an inspector approaching retirement (which was frequent), I have the chief inspector review for:

• Inspections where they never found anything out of spec. We then made a decision whether or not to continue those inspections. Many turned out to be design qualification tests (i.e., if the design was correct, they would always pass).
• Inspections where they always had to request a deviation from engineering. These always ended up being an engineering oversight (e.g., terminal resistance of an electric motor where the engineer forgot to include the resistance of the cable leads). We would then make engineering correct the specifications and would no longer get any out of spec units.

I reduced the inspection department 50% through attrition. We also built critical functional testing into the process performed by the operator.

Miner said:

I am a firm believer in transitioning from inspectors to quality engineers. Every time I had an inspector approaching retirement (which was frequent), I have the chief inspector review for:

• Inspections where they never found anything out of spec. We then made a decision whether or not to continue those inspections. Many turned out to be design qualification tests (i.e., if the design was correct, they would always pass).
• Inspections where they always had to request a deviation from engineering. These always ended up being an engineering oversight (e.g., terminal resistance of an electric motor where the engineer forgot to include the resistance of the cable leads). We would then make engineering correct the specifications and would no longer get any out of spec units.

I reduced the inspection department 50% through attrition. We also built critical functional testing into the process performed by the operator.

Click to expand...

Yes indeed, I've only been here 4 months but my goal is to stop inspecting product and focus on improving the process, however the processes are strictly mechanical/hand assembly. I hope to retool my inspectors into process technicians within a year.

You say that you produce electrical products but do you also design them or are you just manufacturiong? If you design, what's the process for inputting quality into the design? (customer feedback including complaints and repairs, use of best practice etc, feedback from production - ease of assembly, need or otherwise for special tools, jigs, fixtures etc)? If inspecting and testing can be made part of the assembly process, then you won't need a team of inspectors who basically add no value to the product. How do you verify incoming parts and sub-assemblies are correct?

There is no equation and as was stated too many variables and poop on job titles, focus on the job needs and the number of folks to do it effectively.

I wonder, has the CEO asked all departments to give him a justification for their staff along with an "industry standard" for their staffing? Has he first done so for his own staff (lead by example)?