The primary responsibility of every Quality Manager is implementation, support, and management of all the practices for assuring that products and processes adhere to specifications and standards of internal and external audits. Every Quality Manager oversees the administration and continual (happening again and again, especially regularly) improvement of quality management systems. He/She typically is a member of management and serves as a high level consultant within the organization. The Quality Manager provides functional, technical or process leadership and the organization will depend on this individuals’ management of multiple teams. A Quality Manager must develop skills in improving quality management system processes and provide effective feedback to management for review and decision-making. The job of a Quality Manager is a daunting one but with the right skills it is easy to carry out.
Many companies understand the need for assessment of candidates (interview) before engaging them. There are other companies who offer training to newly engaged personnel to enable them understand the operations of the company and position them for strategic impact. However, there are very few companies that provide continuous assessment and training of employees over time. Most companies assess their staff before increment in salary and rarely to identify training needs. It is not a coincidence that it is those companies which assess continually, train and/or promote employees that are the most successful. Every company must have a comprehensive continual assessment and training programme for staff development. It is an investment that yields hefty returns.
Having said all of the above, it is critical to point out that no matter how comprehensive a companys’ training programme is, Quality Managers must endeavour to embark on personal development/training in order to meet up with the demands of the job. The HR Department of every company identifies training needs and develops manuals from interactions (reports, discussions, queries etc.) with various departments and then schedule trainings periodically. This is the reason every Quality Manager has an obligation to do personal development as these trainings cannot cover everything and they do not have to wait for periodical trainings to improve their skills.
Personal development covers activities that improve awareness and identity, develops talent and potential, builds human capital and facilitates employability/promotion. When personal development takes place in the contest of organizations, it refers to the methods, programs, tools techniques, and assessment systems that support human development at the individual level in organizations.
The long and short of the above is that every Quality Manager should see the need to carry out an assessment or audit of self so as to discover strengths and weaknesses in order to give prominence to the areas of strength and improve on the areas of weakness. We cannot be excellent auditors of systems or processes and then fail at auditing our skills as the job demands. Before one is found worthy to be employed as a Quality Manager one must have the ability for team work, leadership, time management, report writing, problem analysis and solving, independent study, conducting research, lateral thinking/creativity, self-confidence, organisational ability, flexibility and adaptability. All these are critical to success in Quality Management. The training modules that most HR departments design will address some, if not all of the above but when it comes to the specifics of Quality Management external training may become necessary. However, it is the training one gives oneself that yields the most fruit. This is why Quality Managers must understand the job well not just to know how to apply their skills on the job but also to note areas of weakness and improve on them.
Because Quality Management entails that Quality Managers work with Inventory, Accounts, Production, Maintenance, Marketing it is necessary that they know some key things about these departments. The efforts we make to understand how these other departments function is personal development. This falls under the general topic of Total Quality Management. This is a management system where the consumer is the final determinant of the quality of a product. It is driven by Quality Managers with the tacit support of Management. There is no one solution to every situation and each organization is unique in terms of culture, management and processes such that every Quality manager have to resort to personal development to be able to carry out TQM successfully in his/her factory. All the training modules on TQM give only guiding principles which means that one will work further to modify these principles as the place of work demands.
Because Quality Management entails that Quality Managers work with Inventory, Accounts, Production, Maintenance, Marketing it is necessary that they know some key things about these departments. The efforts we make to understand how these other departments function is personal development. This falls under the general topic of Total Quality Management. This is a management system where the consumer is the final determinant of the quality of a product. It is driven by Quality Managers with the tacit support of Management. There is no one solution to every situation and each organization is unique in terms of culture, management and processes such that every Quality manager have to resort to personal development to be able to carry out TQM successfully in his/her factory. All the training modules on TQM give only guiding principles which means that one will work further to modify these principles as the place of work demands.
I do not know what your Job Description says. I also do not know what the quality demands of your facility are but I do know that all of us have certain aspects of our JD or work demands which we are not fulfilling/meeting and which no training module covers. These are the areas where you can employ personal development tools to correct and improve upon.
No comments:
Post a Comment