I have several suggestions that I believe could improve the relationship between R&D and quality. First, R&D tends to be quite ignorant when it comes to what the quality procedures are all about. They just see them as dragging out and holding back the development of their product. There needs to be more collaboration between the departments, where R&D gets some insight into where these procedures came from and understand the purpose of the procedure. Also, quality needs to make sure when they put a procedure in place that it will be compatible with all products they are developing and may develop in the future, and be careful about being too specific. In general, having better collaboration between the R&D and quality departments during the development of a product rather than always fighting each other would be beneficial. Having knowledge-sharing events periodically such as every quarter would be one way a company may be able to foster better collaboration between these departments.