Fractional Quality Lead
Leaders who know what’s happening without chasing it
A Fractional Quality Lead gives a UK manufacturer, installer or distributor experienced quality leadership a few days a month, without hiring full time. We keep corrective actions, supplier issues and audits moving between visits, and report regularly to the owner or board on what errors are costing and what is being done about it.
Best when: You need senior quality leadership, but not full time.
What you get
- An experienced quality lead in your business a few days a month.
- Corrective actions, supplier issues and audits kept moving between visits.
- A regular report to the owner or board on what errors are costing and what's being done.
Sounds like your business?
- You need senior quality leadership but cannot justify a full-time quality manager.
- Quality is currently someone’s second job, and it keeps slipping behind their first.
- You have had an improvement programme that faded after the consultant left.
- Supplier issues, corrective actions and audits are not being kept moving between reviews.
- You want a regular quality number going to the board, and nobody is producing one.
What it needs from you
- Enough volume of quality activity to justify the time, typically a business of real operational scale.
- A person inside the business to be the day-to-day contact and eventually the owner.
- Willingness to have quality reported upwards regularly, including in the difficult periods.
- An upfront assessment: if a few days a month is not enough to fix the immediate problem, we will say so.
How it works
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Diagnose
Start with the cost of repeat errors and the state of the quality system.
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Engineer
Run the improvement work with your team, and coach your people to own it.
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Prove
Report the numbers regularly, so you can see quality improving rather than take it on trust.
What each stage involves
- Diagnose
- The engagement starts the same way the other services do: costing the repeat errors and assessing the state of the quality system. That establishes both the commercial case and the baseline, so every later report is measured against something real rather than an impression. It also shows quickly whether a few days a month is genuinely the right level of input, or whether the business needs something more intensive first.
- Engineer
- Between visits, the work is with your team: corrective actions progressing, supplier issues being chased, audits planned. The aim is not to do quality for you but to make it happen without you. Where there is someone inside who can grow into the role, coaching them is part of the point; where there is not, the actions and decisions still have an owner and a date rather than waiting for the next visit.
- Prove
- Each period you get a report on what errors are costing and what is being done about them. The value of this is consistency: quality problems are easy to prioritise once and then lose to a busy month. A regular number, going to the owner or board, is what keeps it on the agenda when everything else is competing for attention.
What this service is not
- Not a full-time quality manager. If the work needs five days a week, the right answer is to hire one.
- Not a temporary fix while you recruit. Though it can cover a gap, it works best as a continuing arrangement.
- Not a substitute for internal audits being carried out by someone competent inside the business.
Who runs this
Karl Pallister
Head of Quality Management at Sapphire Balconies; ~£1m/year cost of poor quality identified
Proof it works
See the measured results behind this work: doubled assembly output, quote turnaround cut from 150 minutes to 15, and more.
More detail
You’ve been made Quality Manager. Now what?
For the person inside the business who has been given quality without the time or authority to fix it: what the first 90 days look like, and how we coach you to lead it.
Find out what your rework really costs.
Start with a free Margin Leak Review: about an hour, on a sample of your own rework or remedial records. If there's a fit, we agree the scope before any work starts.
Free. About an hour. You keep the findings.