It’s definitely a delicate relationship between quality and R&D, but as long as you all understand the common purpose nothing is truly impassable. I have had to work with the J&J quality team specifically regarding the claims we make on our products. I was in charge on writing the documents in which we had substantiations for any claims we made for the products that were designed in my department. Since I knew I would be working almost solely with one person I made sure early to set up a meeting with them to get to know them and so that they knew who I was. It definitely has helped in my interactions with them because there have been times that we have gone back and forth of certain wording or the logic behind what is being written but at the end of the day we both understood that the product needed to go to market and that we cannot be the hold up. So if there was ever any issues that we couldn’t work out over email we would just meet in person and discuss. So like most relationships communication is key. The two parties need to make sure that they are talking and not just dumping work on one another. And this extends upwards too. The low level grunts doing the actual work need to communicate but so do the directors. Even though they are not doing the actual work it is important that each department knows the concerns of the other to ensure good collaboration.

Whilst it may not always be easy to work with quality it is never impossible and in the end all departments are shooting for the same collective goal.