Quality engineers are in charge of monitoring the quality control of a company's products or services for their customers. This entails discovering different ways to lower production costs and finding different ways to improve the quality of a product.

Daily Tasks / Routine Activities

The day to day duties for a company’s quality engineer include a wide range of tasks.

1. They will have to inspect products to make sure that they are compliant with the technical and customer specifications.

2. They typically work with quality technicians in a lab and run measuring equipment such as coordinate measurement machines, and are responsible for quality system maintenance.

3. They also support quality inspectors to make sure that processes and products comply with regulations and meet all the requirements of a quality management system.

4. Quality engineers analyze defects and take action to address customer complaints. Depending on the feedback from customers, quality engineers may have to omit changes in the manufacturing plant in order to improve a product’s function, size, or other characteristics.

5. Compare the product to the original engineer specifications.

6. Quality engineers also have to report any product irregularities to the proper authorities.

7. Developing the different standards and methods for testing, measuring, and analyzing the products or services.

8. Quality engineers are also responsible for the company’s quality documentation. They create quality manuals and procedures, and prepare quality assurance reports.

9. Quality engineers can also investigate the factors surrounding low sales of a product due to poor quality and handle customer and supplier quality issues. 

10. A quality engineer decides what metrics will be inspected and in what manner and then conducts tests and applies statistical process control (SPC) tools and methods to identify improper quality control practices and inspects quality systems for deficiencies.

11. Quality engineers frequently collaborate with design engineers to assess the critical product characteristics that will be measured.

12. Once the defects are identified, quality engineers work on eliminating them using tools such as lean manufacturing and Six Sigma.

13. They constantly work on implementing improvements to enhance quality systems and on developing training to improve awareness of quality control issues.

Key knowledge areas

1. Quality management

Skills

1. Quality engineers need to be highly skilled in problem solving and analysis.

2. An understand how to use statistical process control tools and read engineer drawings.

3. They will also need to have a considerable amount of leadership and communication skills, since they will be discussing issues with the product’s design engineers and customers.

Qualifications

Many quality engineers gain skills from getting certified in Six Sigma and Total Quality Management. These techniques improve their company’s processes and procedures while eliminating any defects in the products. Six Sigma is a tool that helps lower the number of defects and variability between products, while Total Quality Management is centered on the philosophy that everyone should be involved with the quality control of the company’s products and services.