Many years ago Philip B, Crosby a famous quality guru wrote a book title "Quality is Free"
where he advocates for do it right the first time in the manufacturing process.
To understand the concept of quality is free, we have to know what are the
four categories cost of quality to understand the concept of quality is free
per table below:-
Category
Description
Appraisal cost
Cost of performing test and inspection on a product to screen out potential defect include inspector
Internal failure cost
Cost of rework or scrapped product which does not comply to the spec
External failure cost
Cost of poor quality at customer site which involve warranty cost, product recall, lost of customer trust
Prevention cost
Cost of preventing a defect through quality planning of design in quality and build in quality
Among all the four components of quality cost, most organization pay the least attention to
the prevention cost. Zero defect
product does not happen by chance as there are many errors which could happen
to throughout the product life cycle from birth to grave. A very prevalent example that very little
attention is being given on quality planning during the design phase would be a
software product where there are always patches to correct the program. I am sure all computer user would experience
this all the time.
Often organizations only think that do it right the first
time is only applicable during the manufacturing of the product to achieve
quality is free.
They are ignorant that product design is the main culprit
of the cost of poor quality until it is too late.
Many organization will never achieve quality is free due to 3 main reasons:-
1. No attention is given to quality during the early design stage
Throughout concept/design till validation phase, design and marketing team only focus on what is special innovation which will delight customer and customer is willing to pay for it. The normal design approach would be over the wall with little or no collaboration at all with another cross-functional team. This mean quality planning is neglected. During the production phase only quality control of inspection/test to filter out the non-conforming product during production which results in the high appraisal, internal failure cost and expensive external failure cost. It is a ripple effect when there is no investment being made in prevention cost will subsequently result in other 3 quality cost.
2. Unable to surface potential quality problem
The quality issue is always hidden and will only visible under certain circumstances. Most quality problems happen at customer integration as
there was a limited user interface study being done on how a customer could use or integrate into the macro environment.
Another concealed quality problem would be there are not enough sample which represents the population to test out whole range spec.
DFMEA and PFMEA which unable to cover all aspect of a potential problem. A good FMEA requires team member who specializes in quality engineering.
3. Short time to market
This is the most classic reason where organization always push for a product launch at the shortest time without taking into account where adequate testing and planning.
Interested to know what does it take to achieve “quality is
free”. More in an upcoming article.
