Quality Engineer

Smiths Group

Cookeville, TN

Estimated pay: Est. $26–$44/hr (market estimate, not employer-stated)

Shift: Full time

**Company Description**

TUTCO

, LLC, a leading manufacturer of electric heat strips and heating elements serving the HVAC and appliance industries, is seeking a dynamic and detail-oriented Quality Engineer to join our team in Cookeville, Tennessee.

**Job Description**

**POSITION SUMMARY**

The Quality Engineer is responsible for product and process quality throughout the product life cycle, with a strong emphasis on quality planning, manufacturing readiness, defect prevention, and customer satisfaction. This role leads cross-functional quality planning activities, develops and maintains core quality documents, analyzes process and product performance, and drives effective corrective and preventive actions. The Quality Engineer also serves as a key quality contact for assigned OEM customers, ensuring clear communication, timely responses, and alignment with customer-specific requirements.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

Quality Planning and Product Launch Support

• Lead quality planning activities for new products, product transfers, design changes, process changes, and supplier changes from concept through production release.
• Collaborate with Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Sales, and Operations to identify product and process risks and define appropriate controls before release.
• Develop, review, and maintain process flow diagrams, PFMEAs, control plans, inspection plans, test plans, and other quality planning records.
• Define critical-to-quality characteristics, acceptance criteria, sampling requirements, measurement methods, validation needs, and documentation requirements.
• Coordinate PPAP, FAI, and other customer approval submissions, including dimensional results, capability studies, material certifications, test data, and supporting records.
• Assess the quality impact of engineering change requests and process changes, and ensure required verification, validation, training, and customer approval are completed before implementation.
• Facilitate production readiness reviews and verify that quality requirements, inspection methods, gauges, work instructions, and control documents are in place before launch.

OEM Customer Quality and Technical Support

• Serve as the primary quality interface for assigned OEM customers and build professional, responsive working relationships with customer quality and engineering contacts.
• Review and interpret customer drawings, specifications, quality manuals, portals, and customer-specific requirements; communicate applicable requirements to internal teams.
• Coordinate timely responses for customer requests, including PPAPs, FAIs, RMAs, corrective action requests, deviations, source inspections, audits, and regulatory or restricted-substance inquiries.
• Lead or support customer complaint investigations, containment activities, root cause analysis, corrective actions, and verification of effectiveness.
• Prepare and present clear technical updates, quality data, investigation findings, and action plans during customer meetings and reviews.
• Coordinate customer visits, audits, and quality reviews, and ensure commitments and action items are completed by agreed due dates.
• Escalate significant customer, product, or compliance risks to Quality Leadership and affected functions.

Product, Process, and Corrective Action

• Monitor and analyze production, inspection, test, scrap, rework, warranty, and customer complaint data to identify trends, emerging risks, and improvement opportunities.
• Lead structured problem-solving and root cause investigations using appropriate quality tools, and implement sustainable corrective and preventive actions.
• Perform or coordinate product inspections, dimensional verification, reliability testing, and laboratory testing to confirm compliance with specifications and customer requirements.
• Apply statistical methods, SPC, process capability analysis, measurement system analysis, and other quality tools to evaluate process performance and reduce variation.
• Partner with Manufacturing and Engineering to resolve production issues, prevent recurrence, improve first-pass yield, and reduce the cost of poor quality.
• Maintain accurate quality records, reports, approvals, and objective evidence in accordance with document-control and retention requirements.

Supplier and Quality System Support

• Support supplier qualification, PPAP review, incoming quality planning, and supplier corrective actions to ensure purchased materials and components meet requirements.
• Participate in supplier, internal, and customer audits as assigned and support closure of resulting actions.
• Provide training and technical guidance to manufacturing and quality personnel on control plans, inspection requirements, quality standards, and newly released processes.
• Support continuous improvement activities and promote a culture of prevention, accountability, and customer focus.
• Perform other duties as assigned by Quality Leadership.

**Qualificati