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Zero defect a Myth or a reality - Organization accountability


In a normal situation, consumers only buy one product and thus the product must be functioning for its intended usage and specification.  This means a product or service supplier to end consumer only get one chance to show their product is of good quality.  Therefore, all products sold to the consumer market should achieve zero-defect or a very low defect rate such as six sigma quality which is equal to 3.4 defects in one million parts.  

Product with zero defects is a dream of every organization.  The next big question would be what it takes to achieve zero defects.  In the modern world, the end product which reaches the end-user or consumer goes through a very long supply chain, from mother nature raw material such metal, silicon wafer, petrol chemical by-product to form into piece part assemble into sub-assembly and then join together to become final assembly. 



All the touchpoint throughout the supply chain will increase error opportunity which could induce defect in a product.  Refer to this link on the concept of the supply chain. 

The most important condition to strive for the perfection of zero defect is an overall product design with design for manufacturability, serviceability, consumer etc in mind.  Quality awareness must start right from the design of the product. 

Unfortunately, most of the design only focuses on the functionality of the product which resulted in poor manufacturability, the limited supply chain of material and complicated product which is not user friendly.
Many organizations did not realize that zero-defect must be designed in from raw material to piece part to sub-assembly to final assembly.  The irony is that those organizations thought manufacturing process can compensate for the poor design and limited material supply base. 

Very often a company tend to take short cut design process of a product to save on design cost and time to market which uses substandard material.  This had created a ripple effect where company have to live with poor design, spend a huge amount of money to hire resources downstream to manage complicated manufacturing process for the infinite duration of time. 

I will share more about design for manufacturability concept which leads to the zero-defect product in the next article. Please do follow this website by clicking on "Follow" on the top right sidebar.   I have created a youtube video to explain more on this topic.






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Continuous Improvement Program CIP - 6sigma Methodology