I worked as a QA co-op and experienced the conflict between QA and another department. The conflict I experienced was the QA department with the manufacturing department.QA is very by the book and ensure that all the procedures as well as the instructions are being followed. There was a lot of conflict on how we should fix part issues. The manufacturing department focuses on finding a solution to the problem even if it does not follow the quality standards sometimes. So there would be conflict because manufacturing department would present a solution and sometimes it cant be used or must be modified because of our quality standards.

Once possible way to improve this is to slowly update the procedures if the quality standards are too strict. Sometimes the procedures can be made too strict when it is not necessary or does not impact the parts that much. We had issues where we were scrapping a good amount of parts daily because of the procedures. So in one case we discussed the issue with the manufacturing team and decided to update the procedure. We noticed a significant reduction in scrapped parts. So working together with the other team and trying to understand both sides really helps reduce conflict.