Who is a quality inspector and what do they do? His/her task is to monitor compliance with quality requirements, making sure products meet standards of quality and safety. They work in a wide range of companies and industries.
What are the activities of the quality inspector job? Typical work tasks include inspecting raw materials, half-finished products and other components and their accompanying documents, preparation of quality certificates, and making decisions on their use, raising complaints about quality, creation of internal standards and procedures, arranging to carry out checks/inspections in the course of manufacturing, operating or other procedures, taking decisions on repairs, or the scrapping of some products or materials, rejecting or stopping the dispatch of products that do not meet the standards, monitoring quality-related aspects of production and suggesting remedial measures to achieve the desirable quality levels, planning quality-control inspections, schemes of quality-related documentation and other certificates on inspection results, keeping quality-related records and handling complaints about product quality.
Where is it done and under what conditions? Typically in offices where the working environment is fairly comfortable. However, visits to manufacturing areas are, from time to time, necessary and the working conditions may vary according to the nature of the production process involved – some are less pleasant than others.
What tools/equipment do they use? Mainly computing and measuring equipment appropriate to the relevant quality control aspects.
What do you need to succeed? You need to have at least college or degree-level education relevant to the particular quality field, consistency, accuracy, good judgement, organisational abilities and ability to learn.