Quality Engineer for Manufacturing Company
Who are You? Celyn Brum Job(s) Quality Engineer Location (optional) England Describe your career I work for a manufacturing company that makes components for applications like automotive, aerospace and power generation. I work in a specific area and it’s my job to ensure that the products we produce come out right first time, every time- and to find and fix the root cause when that doesn’t happen. Your career history, how did you get your job? I graduated Uni with a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering, then spent a year looking for work before getting a temporary job as a Technical Clerical Assistant checking the paperwork and markings on products at an aerospace factory. After a year that company hired me full-time as a Quality Engineer and gave me additional training, but my role was still limited. When the company I worked for announced they were closing that factory, I put my CV online. I was contacted by several recruitment agencies and had several interviews, but when I finally got my new job it all happened very fast! I heard about the interview on the Tuesday, went in on the Friday afternoon, and had the offer on the Monday. I had to give one month’s notice at my last job; my new job needs three. What’s a typical day at your job(s) like? I get into work for eight am, hang up my bag and coat, and turn on my computer to check my emails and work out what I’m doing for the day. Usually I have plenty left over from the day before, but I’m often waiting on other people, so I chase information that I need. At half past eight I go down to the shop floor to see what was scrapped off in my area yesterday, which I then go back to my computer to record. After that I spend the rest of the day dealing with ongoing projects and new emergencies. Major problems need to be identified and investigated to find the root cause and correct it, but even if nothing has gone wrong I’m busy making sure everything is working as well as it possibly can. If you look up Quality Management on Wikipedia you’ll get an idea of the sorts of things we want to be doing, but most days you spend calling people, emailing people, having meetings with people, filling in paperwork, waving defective components at people and asking what they think, explaining to management why we stopped production/scrapped the valuable component/haven’t fixed that problem yet, explaining to shop floor operators why they can’t do that/we don’t know why it isn’t working, and trying to get production to understand that if they help you make it right they only have to make it once.
There’s a lot of legwork and you spend your time roughly 50/50 between the shop floor and the office. Quality Engineers are a bit of a hodge-podge in dress, varying from smart shirts and dress trousers to company branded t-shirts and trousers covered in pockets. You’ve got to look smart, but comfort is usually more important day-to-day. Quality Engineers report to the Quality Manager and in addition to the daily quality issues and quality escapes (to customers and from suppliers), deal with compliance to national and international standards, audits, and improvement projects such as updating and creating standard operating procedures (SOPs).
Lunch is a half-hour break in the middle of the day, and I go home at quarter to five every day except Friday, when I go home at a quarter past two. Half-day Fridays are very common in the industry, as are days that run from eight am to four pm. Weekends would be overtime for me, although I’m paid a monthly salary and I don’t get any pay for overtime. Job(s) Pros/Cons, Likes/Dislikes
Likes - It’s never a dull job. There are so many different things to do that it’s rarely monotonous or repetitive, and you’re busy physically, mentally and socially. Then there’s the sense of satisfaction when you actually do make an improvement- it can take days or weeks or even months of work, but knowing that you’ve solved a problem permanantly and made a real difference is very rewarding.
Dislikes - It’s a very busy job. You can end up working through breaks just to fit everything in, and you’re often at odds with other departments. Quality improvement means better profits long-term, but Quality containment usually means stopping people from selling things now, and businesses don’t like that! A good business understands that it can’t sell bad product and supports you, but it can still sometimes feel like clawing your way uphill. Knowing that you could make the wrong decision and cost the business a lot of money (or worse, a lawsuit) is a little nerve-wracking. What kinds of people do you typically see in your career path?
Most of the Quality Engineers I know have been in their mid-twenties onwards. They’ve mostly been male, but not entirely. This doesn’t seem the result of any deliberate prejudice or entry barrier, so I assume it has more to do with the general discouragement of girls and women from technological and industrial careers.
I came to it through academics, but a lot of people in my job came up through a different path from the shop floor or through apprenticeships. It’s the sort of job that attracts the people who are willing to do it, and as long as you have the experience or education to know what you’re talking about you can find a road into it- which means that you get people with working-class and middle-class backgrounds in the role. What’s typically right/wrong about how your career is portrayed?
I’ve not seen any portrayals of Quality Engineers in fiction, but the key things to remember that you might not expect are:
1) You spend equal amounts of time dealing with salary-paid professionals and managers, and hourly-paid operators (often quite skilled people). You need both to be working with you if you are going to succeed.
2) Quality Engineers are usually problem-solvers by nature, and we like things to be right- we wouldn’t stay in the job otherwise! That said, we know that in business we can’t wait for everything to be perfect. We just have to be firm on what is good enough, because if we don’t, no-one will. Honesty and integrity are critically important!
3) Slightly tangential, but… it’s not just big, burly men out there. Plenty of women work in industry and manufacturing, and not just in the HR and finance departments. About a third to a half of the shop floor operators are female, mostly middle-aged and working-class like the men.
4) Likewise tangential, but the factory floor is very clean. A dirty factory is a bad sign- if a company can’t keep the working environment clean and tidy, then they generally can’t keep their production quality on track either.
You can look up all sorts of Quality Management Tools and Systems online, but remember that implementing helpful long-term changes is hard work! People resist change, even when it’s beneficial. A good corporate culture is one that supports its employees in doing the right thing, rather than the easy one.