If you want to manage quality well, you must first put quality personnel in an appropriate organizational structure.
The basic principle of managing people is: Try to keep the interests of employees and the interests of the enterprise in sync. Although it is impossible to achieve complete overlap, the starting point must be the same strategy.
As the saying goes, "the ass determines the head", therefore, quality personnel of different types of work have different starting points.
Let's look at a strange question: Which department do the quality personnel belong to?
Generally speaking: R&D personnel belong to the R&D department, sales personnel belong to the sales department, and production personnel belong to the production department.
However, for quality personnel, they do not necessarily all belong to the quality department, which may be different in different enterprises.
- For project quality personnel, some enterprises belong to procurement, and some belong to research and development.
- For SQE, some enterprises belong to the purchasing department.
- For IPQC inspectors, some enterprises belong to the production department.
- For CQE, some enterprises belong to the sales department.
- As for the quality system personnel, they should belong to the quality department without any dispute, but in some enterprises they are assigned to the administrative department.
why?
Let's take the comparison between IQC and IPQC as an example.
The industry is different, the products are different, and the incentive mechanism of the enterprise is different, but the enterprise will adjust the organizational structure according to the principle of minimizing management costs and maximizing profits.
People have their own starting point when looking at problems. If you want the starting point of process quality management to be consistent with the starting point of the enterprise, you must first adjust the position of the buttocks of the process quality personnel.
Most enterprise IQC belongs to the quality department, but why for IPQC, some enterprises belong to the quality department, while others belong to the production department?
Although both IQC and IPQC are doing inspections, they have many differences:
- IPQC is responsible for the inspection and inspection of the production line before the opening of the production line to ensure that there are no abnormalities and hidden dangers. In addition to inspecting products, it is also necessary to check whether the production staff is operating in a standardized manner. If a problem is found, some companies may have a point deduction mechanism, which will affect the employee's bonus. Will it record all the problems, and will it turn big problems into small problems, which will pose doubts to the management of the enterprise?
- The degree of gatekeeping varies. IPQC's judgment on unqualified products should be reasonable, neither too tight nor too loose; for incoming IQC, the inspection is tighter, and there are not many people who oppose it within the company, but IPQC can't.
- It's handled differently. For IPQC handling of unqualified products, if it can be repaired, it should be repaired as much as possible. IQC usually rejects the unqualified products of the incoming materials if the company does not need them urgently, because the loss is borne by the supplier.
- IPQC does not have the same . Process quality control analysis has more dimensions.
- Responsibility pressures are different. A large number of unqualified products found in the process will worry the relevant personnel in the enterprise more than unqualified products found in incoming materials.
- There are different ways to solve problems. For unqualified incoming materials, if the supplier is unable to rectify or is unwilling to rectify, the supplier can be replaced; but for process rectification, there is no way out, and it still depends on the company's own professional ability to overcome, and must overcome.
Therefore, based on the above differences, from the management point of view, whether IPQC belongs to the quality department or the production department, each has its own advantages and disadvantages.
If it belongs to the production department, it pays more attention to benefits and efficiency ; if it belongs to the quality department, it pays more attention to quality.
In the same way, the IQC of many companies belongs to the quality department, but the SQE belongs to the purchasing department.
The procurement index is to continuously reduce costs, IQC is responsible for inspection, and SQE is responsible for supplier quality review and quality rectification. If quality and procurement are completely independent, there will be no intersection of assessment indicators, which may lead to low work efficiency and slow progress.
Here are two extreme examples:
- In company A, the quality personnel belong to the procurement department, project department, R&D department, production department, etc. The headquarters has only one quality director and a secretary to coordinate the quality personnel distributed in various places.
- In company B, all quality personnel belong to the quality department, and the quality department reports directly to the headquarters, and the salary and promotion system also uses independent channels. Can deliver to customers on time. The factory has nothing to do with these quality personnel.
There is no right or wrong here, it is just a matter of strategy, which reflects the positioning strategy of the enterprise.
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