Why Hiring a Certified Quality Engineer is a Smart Choice?
In today’s competitive business environment, ensuring the highest quality of products and services is crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction and staying ahead of the competition. While both regular engineers and Certified Quality Engineers (CQEs) bring valuable skills to the table, hiring a CQE offers distinct advantages that can significantly benefit your organization in the automotive sector particularly.
CQEs undergo very specialized training in quality concepts imperative for a quality engineer to enter a new position and start running. While I have seen many new hires with only a manufacturing, civil or industrial background they do not have the foundation of quality in their back pocket. CQEs are trained specifically in core techniques, of FMEA development, root cause analysis and statistical methods to name a few. When a CQE is involved in design reviews they have the expertise of APQP knowledge to enable them to understand what the customer is demanding from their product, and how to mitigate risks to ensure a quality product to the customer. Regular engineers may be skilled in other areas but specific to quality they would not have the same depth of knowledge.
When interacting with the customer as a quality engineer representative of your organization you are expected to understand the specific quality concepts in the development stage such as tollgates within the APQP and FMEA process. Understanding what measurements are required, what devices are needed to quote to measure, performing an MSA study, interpreting a DFMEA and developing a PFMEA based on CC and SC risk mitigation, these concepts are all specific to what a quality engineer would be fully trained to perform from the start of a project. Your customer will see your facility as knowledgeable with easy interactions, there will be no need for coaching, and you will be able to achieve the deliverables for a project seamlessly or achieve an improvement quickly. CQEs are skilled in ensuring containment activities are performed to the level required in the industry, the customer will be assured non-conforming product will not escape into the field with data driven details provided from an experienced CQE.
CQEs are trained to focus on continuous improvement, a key aspect of quality management. They use tools such as Six Sigma, Lean concepts and root cause analysis to identify improvement areas, which will inevitably reduce costs through customer complaints, scrap reduction and improved performance. Regular engineers might not have the same level of training in these specific methodologies, potentially leading to missed opportunities for improvement.
CQEs are well versed with industry standards and regulations such as ISO 9001 and IATF 16949, ensuring your company complies to these standards will ensure you remain in good credibility with your customer. An inexperienced person could lead to infractions in the quality system with majors reported to your customer in some cases.
Leadership abilities from a CQE usually leads to training others in your organization which will lead others with an enhanced skill set and potentially additional certified members. It can create a culture of quality within the organization driving improvement and long-term success, done through quality focused training regular engineers cannot provide.
While both regular engineers and CQEs bring valuable skills to an organization, the specialized knowledge, focus on continuous improvement, cost-saving abilities, enhanced customer satisfaction, compliance expertise, and leadership qualities of CQEs make them a superior choice for organizations committed to achieving the highest standards of quality. With the small investment of CQE training and exam fees the reward greatly out ways the costs. Investing in a CQE can lead to significant long-term benefits, helping your organization thrive in a competitive market.
The ASQ site has availability of articles to help with many types of specific quality situations such as ‘emotional intelligence in quality’ how to handle issues with the customer and with team development.