Here at Team Quality Services, we like to say, “We’re there so you don’t have to be!” That is because while automotive quality assurance is incredibly important, it doesn’t have to take over your entire life. If you’re able to find the right representation, someone else can be your eyes and ears at the OEM.
You’re looking for the Quality Liaisons from TQS. We handle inspections and representation in the form of automotive quality assurance. Remember, there’s more to life than just having a successful product launch. Your quality of life also depends on maintaining a healthy work/life balance, seeing your family, spending time with friends, and enjoying hobbies. We don’t want you to have to sacrifice everything else in your life for the sake of a successful product launch.
Mental Health Isn’t Something to Push Aside
Downtime is important because it’s time to re-energize. You need a break. No, seriously — you need it! Working too much leads to burnout and a whole host of physical and mental health conditions.
Working more than 40 hours per week can make you more likely to drink “risky” amounts of alcohol, which then can also increase your risk for life-threatening conditions. It also makes it harder to have healthy, happy interpersonal relationships. Even if you have time for relationships, the stress and fatigue that you’re experiencing due to working overtime may take a toll on them.
You only have so many hours in the day. If you’re working more than eight hours a day and not taking weekends off, you’re sacrificing sleeping, healthy eating habits, exercise, relaxation, and more. Not incorporating these healthy and necessary activities into your life puts you at risk for heart disease, diabetes, depression, obesity, and so much more. The Harvard Medical School found that people who worked 55 or more hours a week increased their risk of heart attack by 13% and stroke by 33% percent, compared with those who worked 35 to 40 hours per week.
The Burdens and Stressors of Your Job
If you feel like work is consuming your life, you’re not alone. Tier 1 Quality Managers and Quality Engineers have a lot on their plate. While the job pays well and is incredibly rewarding when things are going well, the stress levels can be overwhelming at times. It’s very time demanding, for one. After all, there are millions of dollars at stake for your company. With so much money on the line, there’s not much empathy from your superiors. Their main priority is on-time delivery of quality parts at all costs; it’s what they expect.
It’s no wonder then that the average length of time of someone in this position is about two to three years. Tier 1 Quality Managers and Quality Engineers get burnt out! Your company may not be concerned with your work-life balance, so it’s up to you to give yourself a mental health break. You’ve got us! We make the job bearable.
How Our Quality Liaisons Provide the Break You Need
Imagine an average work day. You’re at your location doing your day-to-day quality engineer tasks. Typically, you can only assess the quality of the parts while they’re on-site with you. Then, the parts ship out to an OEM.
At the OEM facility where those parts are going to be assembled, you have no coverage. When the OEM says there is an issue with the parts, you have to drop everything you’re doing and react. That call can come at any hour, on any day. You’re leaving your kid’s baseball game, canceling dinner plans, or even getting out of bed and driving in the middle of the night. You may need to get on an airplane and fly somewhere out of state. An issue at the OEM is an issue for you.
When the dreaded call comes, you have two choices:
You can go yourself and spend nights and weekends at the OEM.
Or
You can do nothing, roll the dice, and hope nothing bad happens.
What if you had a third, and much better, option? A much better alternative to either of these is to have someone on site as your representative! This is how an expert Quality Liaison becomes an extension of your Tier 1 supplier. We’re at the OEM for you, serving to improve your work/life balance.
Your Quality Liaison Handles Issues Internally
Let’s say your OEM gets a shipment of parts from you, and some aren’t exactly as they should be, as happens from time to time in automotive quality assurance. Your Quality Liaison ensures that every component that goes into the assembly line in the OEM meets the quality standards. If it doesn’t, he or she issues a quality alert to you back at the supplier. Not only do we monitor the quality of a process, we also play a key role in fixing issues if and when they arise.
We identify the issue proactively and handle it internally. This is important because if the same quality alert comes from the OEM rather than us, you’re going to incur costs. You want us to catch it before they do — and we do! In fact, for every internal quality alert we issue, we have a 3:1 ratio. This means that for every four issues that someone has, three are identified by us.
For more information on what we can handle in order to save you from working extra hours at the OEM, and how this translates into savings for your company as well, download our case study. It plainly lays out everything you need to know about the benefits of partnering with TQS!