For full detail, please see: Quality practitioner / Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education  

All apprentices must take an independent assessment at the end of their training to confirm that they have achieved occupational competence. Rigorous, robust and independent end-point assessment (EPA) is essential to give employers confidence that apprentices completing an apprenticeship standard can actually perform in the occupation they have been trained in and can demonstrate the duties, and knowledge, skills and behaviours (KSBs) set out in the occupational standard.


What are they?

Quality Practitioners have the following Occupation Duties:

DUTY

KSBS

Duty 1 Contribute to the formulation of quality strategy, such as reducing product defects or improving service performance and support the achievement of these by themselves or others, such as other employees or suppliers.

K1 K9 K11 K14 K15 K16 K19

S1 S2 S8 S9 S12

B1 B3 B4

Duty 2 Contribute to the formulation of output related customer satisfaction activities, such as Right First Time and On-Time delivery and support the achievement of these by themselves or others, such as customer stakeholders, other employees or suppliers.

K1 K2 K3 K4 K5 K7 K9 K10 K14

S1 S2 S8 S11 S12

B2 B3 B4

Duty 3 Contribute to the formulation of supplier performance measurements, such as improving quality of supplied goods or services and support the achievement of these by themselves or others, such as other company employees or employees throughout a multi-tier supply chain.

K1 K4 K5 K7 K14 K15

S1 S2 S8 S9 S12

B2 B3 B4

Duty 4 Responsible for deployment of Quality Policies, Processes and Procedures as defined in the organisation’s Quality Management System and identification of opportunities for improving the Quality Management System.

K1 K2 K5 K8 K9 K14 K15 K16 K19

S1 S11 S12

B2 B3 B4 B5

Duty 5 Plan and conduct audits/assurance in line with the organisation’s audit plan/programme to meet customer/organisational/regulatory audit requirements.

K1 K2 K3 K4 K5 K7 K11 K12 K19

S2 S5 S6 S8 S9 S12

B2 B3 B4 B5

Duty 6 Identify, investigate and contain non-conformances and advise on actions to prevent recurrence.

K13 K19

S2 S3 S4 S5 S7 S9 S10 S12

B2 B3 B4 B5

Duty 7 Inspect/verify/validate a Product or Service against stated product requirements/acceptance criteria/service levels, such as checking the weight or dimensions of a product or timely delivery of a service.

K3 K4 K5 K6 K8 K10 K11 K19

S7

B2 B3 B4 B5

Duty 8 Develop quality control/assurance plans for the product, service or project they are responsible for, such as product dimensional control, on-time service delivery.

K3 K4 K5 K6 K8 K10 K11 K19

S1 S2 S7 S8 S9 S11 S12

B2 B4 B5

Duty 9 Advise on and/or use tools and techniques to improve quality performance, such as reducing waste, improving right first time delivery, reducing non-compliance.

K6 K7 K10 K13

S2 S3 S4 S7 S9 S11

B1 B3 B5

Duty 10 Gather and analyse routine quality performance data and produce relevant reports to support governance, assurance and improvement activities.

K6 K8 K10 K11 K13 K19

S2 S3 S5 S7 S9 S10

B1 B2 B4 B5

Duty 11 Guide and support others inside the Quality Function or in other functions to improve quality competence and quality performance.

K16 K17 K18

S2 S4 S7 S9 S11 S12

B1 B3 B5

Duty 12 Support the development of new/changed products or services, through identifying/quantifying quality risks and contribute to the analysis and mitigation/prevention of these risks.

K1 K2 K3 K4 K5 K6 K7 K8 K14 K15 K18 K19

S1 S2 S3 S5 S8 S11 S12

B2 B3 B5


The KSBs are as follows:


Knowledge

  • K1: Understand the organisations operating environment and the factors that may influence its direction and performance, including the markets it operates in, roles and responsibilities, who its stakeholders are and what they require from the organisation.
  • K2: Understand the environment in which the organisation’s products/services are produced or supplied, and the factors that may influence performance, including legislation, customer requirements and regulatory requirements.
  • K3: How the organisation’s strategy is sensitive to stakeholder perceptions and how this knowledge informs priorities at a tactical level.
  • K4: How applicable contractual and commercial requirements for quality affect the organisation’s performance objectives for their specific products / services.
  • K5: The methods and tools for identifying customers/stakeholders and gathering information about their requirements including the tools for analysing and prioritising customer/stakeholder quality requirements using tools such as Kano model.
  • K6: How to convert quality requirements into performance measures objectives using tools such as Critical to Quality Trees (CTQ Trees), requirements matrices and operational definition.
  • K7: Risk and opportunity management, including the risk and opportunity management principles, framework and processes, types of risk/opportunity associated with new product/service development and improvement, process and supply chain management and methods and tools for identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks/realising opportunities, such as risk and opportunity register, risk and opportunity matrix, Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), Failure Mode and Effects Analysis.
  • K8: Products/services life cycle stages (such as Capture, Design and Development, Integration, Production, Support and Closure) and the implication for quality
  • K9: Concept of process design and how this supports specific organisational objectives using tools such as process flowchart, value stream mapping and SIPOC (Supplier, Input, Process, Output, and Customer).
  • K10: Tools and techniques for managing the organisation’s specific products / services to meet customer requirements such as Quality Function Deployment, Lean Product Development and Design for Manufacturing.
  • K11: How to plan, measure, manage and monitor organisation’s quality objectives.
  • K12: Understand the purposes for auditing and how to plan, conduct, report and follow up an audit.
  • K13: When to apply a range of business improvement approaches tools and techniques such as Problem definition, measurement systems analysis, Basic data analysis, graphical data analysis, use of software tools for data analysis, root cause analysis, identification and assessment of improvement options, process control tools.
  • K14: The key considerations (such as political, economical, social, technological, legal and environmental) and approaches necessary (such as Tuckman’s Storming, Norming, Forming and Performing) to enable change in organisations, products or services.
  • K15: The company’s key drivers for change (internal and external) may influence priorities and objectives.
  • K16: How to promote the right behaviours to create a quality culture in the organisation and how this leads to organisational performance improvements.
  • K17: The techniques used for improving awareness and performance in relation to quality objectives and requirements.
  • K18: Learn how different sources and methods will aid in maintaining own development in the quality profession.
  • K19: Principles of the foundation of Quality and Quality Management System.
     

Skills

  • S1: Identify, interpret and apply relevant legal, governmental or industry regulations affecting the organisation.
  • S2: Communicate using appropriate methods (verbal, written, visual) to influence internal and external stakeholders, using appropriate questioning techniques such as open questions, leading questions.
  • S3: Identify, collect and analyse relevant quality data using appropriate tools and techniques such as Pareto analysis, statistical methods and trending analysis.
  • S4: Apply methods and tools to improve the quality performance of processes, products and services such as production control plans, standardised work, use of failure modes and effects.
  • S5: Identify, analyse and prioritise quality specific risks and opportunities. Support the development, implementation and effectiveness of resulting actions.
  • S6: Plan and conduct system, product or process audits.
  • S7: Assess the effectiveness of the measurement systems using tool such as Measurement Systems Analysis.
  • S8: Identify requirements from technical documents, commercial input or stakeholder statements and converting to definitions that can drive the organisations processes
  • S9: Identify gaps in process performance and develop improvement plans to close gaps.
  • S10: Apply structured problem solving including identification, definition, measurement, analysis, improvement and control methods and tools.
  • S11: Communicate organisational quality strategy to all levels of the organisation.
  • S12: Identify who the internal and external stakeholders are and their current and optimal positions (such as hostile, help it work, opposed, uncooperative, indifferent, hesitant, enthusiastic support) required to support quality related activities.
     

Behaviours

  • B1: Promote actively best practices and continuous improvement.
  • B2: Operates diligently with professionalism considering a wider picture.
  • B3: Act with integrity by being open and honest.
  • B4: Always put customers at the heart of every task.
  • B5: Seek continuous professional development opportunities such as self-reflection, gathering information, producing personal development plans and keeping up to date on sector/organisation regulation.

How are they assessed at EPA?

For full, in detail criteria of all parts of the assessment and each KSB (including Fail/Pass/Distinction criteria), please see: st0853_quality-practitioner_l4_epa-for-publication_13082020.pdf (instituteforapprenticeships.org) 

 

AreaKSBProjectProfessional Discussion
KnowledgeK1X
K2X
K3
X
K4X
K5X
K6X
K7
X
K8X
K9X
K10X
K11X
K12
X
K13X
K14X
K15X
K16
X
K17X
K18
X
K19
X
SkillsS1
X
S2
X
S3X
S4X
S5X
S6
X
S7X
S8X
S9X
S10X
S11
X
S12X
BehavioursB1
X
B2X
B3X
B4
X
B5
X