Blackwood Engineering works with some of the largest global heavy machinery brands. Quality Manager David Williams explains why at Blackwood Engineering a quality first approach is essential for customers.
First things first, what is your background?
I have worked in quality for over 20 years. My previous roles have seen me working quality engineer and management positions in a variety of sectors including aviation, aerospace medical and metal products.
What is your core role as Blackwood’s Quality Manager?
My role is to ensure practices and processes are in place for us to be able to receive and supply products that are to agreed specifications. This encompasses all aspects of quality including suppliers , internal and external customers.
The quality department in both the UK and Belgium is focused on delivering quality assured product to the end user.
This entails anything from involvement in New Product Introduction , Sampling Inspection at Goods In and also occasionally reworking parts to bring them back into specification.
What challenges do the quality department face?
Working in Quality there are ALWAYS issues and challenges to face – It’s part and parcel of the role!
At Blackwood we deal with quality concerns from different customers displaying very similar failure modes and put plans in place to rectify them.
It’s been a challenge to get the different suppliers to address the issues in the same way to prevent recurrence.
How do you address these challenges?
Dealing with Quality challenges is all about collecting the right data so you can provide accurate feedback to your customers and suppliers. That goes for internal , supplier and customer concerns. Without it you can’t really put effective corrective actions in place.
Any final thoughts?
Blackwood has an experienced quality team so that should give customers peace of mind with regards to Quality Assurance. We have been working on growing the quality team, developing the teams skills and experience which allows us to provide customers solutions a quality-first service.
