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.
