Who owns quality - Quality is Everybody business
Throughout
the years of interacting with over 100 companies in computer
or electronic base component industry,
more than 80% of them told me
that quality department owns the quality of the product. I am sure you will give the same answer
that personnel in the quality department is accountable for a product is quality useless
you are already an experience quality practitioner or are certified quality engineer.
The correct
answer would be everyone in the organization who is involved in bringing the
product to the end consumer is responsible for product quality. Top management, designers and planners, operators in the manufacturing line play a role in overall product creation owns
quality.
This is
because quality has to be designed in, planned in and built in and it is not
achieved through inspection. Most of the
organization has the misconception that inspection process create quality
product and inspection function is the main function of the quality department. Therefore when customer complain of poor
quality, the counter measure by such
organization would always include more inspections. Thus, inspection
is always attach to quality department and everybody thought that quality
department is accountable for product quality.
Poor quality department are always blamed if there is customer
complaint of poor quality when every product creation process contribute to the
product quality!!
How do we measure quality?
Consumer (end
user) and producer (product manufacturer or supplier) measure quality
differently. As the end user is the pay
master therefore every producer must understand how consumer measure quality of
the product in order to produce parts which is able to satisfy consumers
requirement and “specs”. Unfortunately
not many producer esp top management is
able to appreciate this point and able to drive this point across the
organization. Organizations that are
able to measure their product from the consumers' perspective usually enjoy higher rate of success which
resulted in higher sales.
Refer to this youtube for more explanation on critical to customer tree 👇
What
consumers measure are very subjective and
each consumer perceived quality differently therefore in order to
objectively measure quality, producer or
product/part supplier must be able to identify
a few key measurable characteristics of product which represent general
consumer measurement.
An example below
shows how an important measurable
characteristic an electric fan can be identified thru the use of critical to
quality tree per below. Critical to quality tree is used to translate the customer's requirements into measurable metrics and align to the customer requirement. It is used in
six sigma methodology to determine which
key parameters of a product should be measured and controlled. Through critical to quality to tree
analysis, we have identified 4
parameters which need monitoring - motor
torque, fan blade size, appearance
cosmetic check, motor speed. During the
manufacturing process of the electrical fan,
manufacturer need to ensure the 4 key parameters are being monitored and
controlled.
The key critical to quality characteristic are
then measured/tested using calibrated
measuring/testing equipment or inspected
by inspection equipment or human inspector (applicable appearance that is not
possible to be measured).
 |
| Figure 2 Critical to Quality Tree for an electric fan |
In summary we can measure quality once we have identified the key parameters which are important to customer and quality.
