A “Contracted Unit” (sometimes called a “Contracted Hour“) is essentially reserving portion of our liaison’s time to monitor and address issues with your supplied parts. Contracted Units are minimum weekly billing amounts. Contracted Units help us manage the capacity of our field liaisons, and ensure they have adequate time to investigate, isolate, and communicate potential quality issues at your product’s point of use. For example, for an agreement that’s 10 Contracted Units, your on-site liaison will work up to approximately 10 hours per week. Should your liaison need to work more than the contracted amount, he/she will request “Additional Hours” which are billed at a premium rate. Additional Hours require customer pre-approval.

For isolated incidents when your liaison may need to work more than your weekly Contracted Units, your liaison will request authorization to work “Additional Hours“. Additional Hours are billed at a premium rate (x1.5) on top of your weekly Contracted Units. Additional Hours can be thought of as overtime for your liaison. When requesting approval for Additional Hours, your liaison will specify the number of hours he/she believes is necessary to resolve the issue, as well as a description of the issue, and reason for the overtime. Additional Hours can be approved or declined quickly via email, our Qnet™ mobile app, or Qnet™ web portal.

One of the advantages of partnering with TQS is that you get team coverage, rather than an individual. While you have a primary liaison you’ll deal with at each plant, TQS has other liaisons at the plant that are cross-trained on your product. This allows our customers to be covered when someone inevitably gets sick or goes on vacation. In the event that another liaison is covering for your primary liaison, you’ll receive an email notification of the temporary assignment. Plant personnel will also be informed that the liaison is temporarily covering your account.

TQS understands that pre-SOP/SORP schedules can be sporadic, sparse, and irregular. If you’re contracting a TQS liaison on the launch of a new vehicle/platform that’s going through pilot/validation builds, we will not bill the weekly Contracted Units until the start of regular production (SORP). Throughout pilot & validation builds (pre-SORP), your liaison will request Additional Hours that will be billed on an as-needed basis. Once the plant reaches the start of regular production (SORP), your weekly Contracted Units will be activated.