How to Build a Successful Career in Quality Management?

The role of a quality manager involves supervising, improving, and ensuring the quality of the day-to-day business, productivity, and operations of the company. A quality manager needs to make sure that the organization, its service, and its products are matching their pre-approved standards and are consistent as expected by the company and the customers. Quality management mainly consists of four components: quality control, quality assurance, quality improvement, and quality planning.

This job role has a wide reach in all kinds of business nowadays because its quality is a requisite in today’s competitive corporate world and a quality manager ensures the standards meet in every process of the company, from manufacturing to customer relationships and everything in between. It is customary for the quality manager to provide extensive instruction regarding the policies of the company, standards, processes, and practices. The responsibility also involves making sure the employees are following the guidelines issued by the company in their various respective roles.

The working environment or workplace of a quality control manager or quality assurance manager can vary depending on the industry. It can be an office or a manufacturing hub or a laboratory. One might be a full-time employee at that firm or might go solo, working as a freelancer. Frequent traveling can be a part of this job. Collaborating with other managers of different departments to implement quality measures and maintain proper functioning might also be a part of this job role.

Now that we have understood the basic role of a Quality manager, let’s now understand what makes quality managers in demand in the current corporate world.

Importance of a Quality Manager in Today's Business

The success or failure of a business largely depends on the quality filtering process in the workplace. Quality plays a significant role in any business or service sector. A business that fails to ensure quality in its products and services loses its credibility with customers, loses trust, and eventually becomes an Ignored brand. Consumers want their hard-earned money to be spent on quality products rather than products that do not provide them value for money.

Here the role of a quality manager comes into play. They make sure to deliver quality products and services beyond the expectations of the customer. Thus customer satisfaction leads to its loyalty. A satisfied customer tends to return again and again for the same product or service.

Thus the implementation of quality management tools ensures customer loyalty, resulting in better business that results in increased customer satisfaction and profits.

The responsibilities of a Quality Manager may include the following roles:

Review customer requirements through surveys and Q&As and pass them on to the organization for implementation.

Creating and maintaining an up-to-date product or process specifications list.

Supervising the work of the managers or team leads of various other departments and guiding them to maintain the required quality measures.

Providing in-depth statistical reports to the executive board.

Training the employees on quality assurance standards and processes.

Performing regular auditing of the company’s quality system and making plans to work on the necessary improvement.

Imposing standards for quality as well as healthiness and security.

Reviewing existing policies and making suggestions for improvements and implementation.

Making sure that the company operations are being executed effectively to keep up with the competitors in the same field.

Measuring necessary performances to identify the area of weaknesses and make necessary improvements.

Monitoring the employees' performance, gathering relevant data, and producing statistical reports.

Skills Required to Become a Quality Manager

Every field has certain skill set requirements. One must acquire those qualities to flourish in that field. An aspirant can always goal for learning new skills and acing them through consistent practice. The top three essential qualities that are required in the job of quality management industry are as follows:

• Listening skill - Listening skill is the initial step to effectively resolving any problem. It is crucial that a team member does not hesitate to communicate with you when any kind of dilemma or problem arises. This helps to bring up effective team strategies or execution processes. So, make sure you lead your way through quality management with great leadership qualities, communication skills, and interpersonal communication abilities.

• Self-confidence - A quality manager has a responsibility of maintaining product standards, thus he or she must be self-confident. A quality manager must be aware of future action plans. Every project possesses some kind of risk or anticipation of loss. However, it will be the self-confidence and assurance of the quality manager will play a very important role in such conditions.

• Patience - This is the key quality of the person in the leadership position. A quality manager must be patient with the team member and with the customer, he or she is dealing with in the whole process. Communicating with them along with the stakeholders of the company about the quality and the reviews of the product does increase the productivity and self-confidence of the team. Thus patience and communication are the key skills of a quality manager that go hand-in-hand.

How Can You Find Your Way into Quality Management?

To get started with a quality management career, you need to understand some of the topics that this discipline incorporates:

Six Sigma, which involves different levels of Mastery including Champion, Black Belt, and Master Black Belt.

Minitab, A software utilized by six sigma professionals.

CTFL or Certified Tester Foundation Level is a certificate recognized by International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB) globally for software development/ software testing.

Lean management - an approach to running and managing an organization with the aim of continuous improvement and long-term systematic working.

TOC aka Theory of Constraints is a management paradigm and a set of rules that guides on improving the ongoing performance of a system. So, to get into Quality Management, you'll need to learn and understand thoroughly the topics stated above.

Books You Should Read to Ace Quality Management

If you wish to pursue Quality Management as your career, the following are the most-preferred books that will help you get in-depth knowledge of this field:

The Ten Commandments of Quality Management- By Ajit Silva

This book is based on 20 years of the author’s experience in the field of research, management, observation, practices, and experiences in the quality management domain. According to this book, the 10 Commandments of quality management will create great leaders of the next generation. The author Ajith Silva over here compares and contrasts the behavior patterns of traditional managers of quality managers and evaluates the outcomes.

Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product- By Walter A. Shewhart

This book is written by The father of modern quality control, Walter A. Shewhart. He brings together the discipline of statistics, engineering, and economics in a simple and highly effective tool; Chat Control. This technique has been effective in economic development from the 1940s to the current time.

Making Change Work - By Brien Palmer

This book tells us about how an organization strives to stay ahead of the competition. How all successful organizations improve and evolve their organizational processes and work structures to increase the effectiveness and performance of the company.

Conclusion

Leaving a mark in this competitive world requires a lot of effort, continuous learning, skill stacking, and consistently being on the hunt of looking for improvement. This holds equally true in the field of Quality management as well. And no matter how much effort it takes from you, the universal applicability, hefty salaries, and tremendous scope make it all worth it. Yet, creating a successful career in the field of quality management is well within your reach and could be achieved through skill development and practice.