The Important Objectives Of Quality Control

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Any product offered to the market is for the purpose of fulfilling a utility, although a product has to offer a lot more than just satisfying a need; product has to provide quality to the customer. Modern customers are very demanding and requires a whole package of services and utilities than just a single product.

Quality is becoming one of a threshold requirement not only in the utilities it deliver but also in processes a business goes through during their activities. Total quality management and quality controls are two of the rising terminologies coming up as the requirement for quality has increased.

It would unfair to confine quality in few words as it is a broad term, and can be defined in many different ways by different people. Some define it as meeting customer requirements, some as exceeding it. Reliability and delight delivered is also considered to be as quality, as well as reaching zero defect to.

According to ISO 8402-1986 quality standard "quality is the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs."

Some of the definition of quality are:

Conformance to specifications measures whether the product or service meets the target and tolerance level determined. For instance, the specified dimensions for a part of machine may be specified by the engineer as 3.05 inches. It would be interpreted as the core dimension is 3.00 inches but it can vary from 2.95 inches-3.05 inches. Likewise, the time of waiting for room service might be 20 minutes, but there might be a tolerable delay of additional 10 minutes. The amount of light provided by a 60 watt light bulb can also be considered. If the bulb provides 50 watts it does not obey the specifications. As these examples illustrate, conformance to specification is directly quantifiable, though it may not be related to the buyer’s idea of quality.

Fitness for use emphasis on whether the product accomplishes its intended function or use.

For instance, a BMW and a Jeep Cherokee both meet a fitness for use specification if transportation is considered as the intended function. It can also be seen that fitness for use is a user based definition; it is proposed to meet the needs of a specific consumer group.

Value for price is explains quality as that consumers often use to evaluate product or service usefulness. This combines consumer criteria with economics; and also assumes that the definition of quality is price sensitive.

Consider, that consumer wish to sign up for a personal finance seminar and discovers that the same seminar is being taught at two different locations at different tuition rates. If one takes the cheaper seminar, he/she will feel that value for the price is greater.

Support services is the quality of a product or service judged in terms of support services presented along with the core product. Quality not only confined to the product or service, it also applies to the consumers, processes, and organizational environment associated.

For instance, the quality of a school is judged by the staff and course offerings, along with the efficiency and accuracy of processing paper work.

Further defined are the concept of Quality control and Total quality management:

Quality control:

Quality control are the set of procedures designed to ensure that the procedures and services performed are according to the desired quality standards; and to meets the requirement accordingly. QC is alike, but not indistinguishable from, quality assurance. Quality assurance are the set of procedures formulated to ensure that a product/service not yet developed meets specified requirements.

In order to implement a QC program;

A corporation first decides which standards the product or service must meet.

The extent of Quality Control activities are identified; consider the percentage of manufactured units to be verified from each batch.

Data from real world must be collected; such as, the amount of units that fail and then reported to an official.

Remedial action is decided and implemented; such as, defective units should be repaired/rejected and poor service repeated free of cost until the customer is satisfied. If unit failures of poor service occur is high, a plan is formulated to increase the creation or service process and then the plan is implemented.

In the end, the QC procedure must be planned as continuing to ensure that corrective efforts have produced acceptable results and for immediately detecting recurrences or new instances of trouble.

Important objectives of quality control:

To bring a Reduction in per unit cost.

To achieve better Utilization of raw materials, human resource and money.

To take essential remedial steps to keep the Quality of product or facilities.

To attain greater consumer satisfaction by reducing client objections.

To locate and identify the processes faults in order to control.

To minimize scrap and waste.

Establishing Control Limits

Although it can be arbitrarily determine when to state a process not in control; Application of statistical principles are common to do so.

Suppose the mean of a variable has to be controlled, such as the size of piston rings. Assuming that the mean of the course remains the same, sample means are normally distributed around the actual mean, it is also known (due to the approximate normal distribution of the means) that the distribution of mean has a standard deviation of Sigma over the square root of the sample size. It depicts that nearly 95% of the sample mean falls within the limits of ± 1.96 Sigma.

The common standard for establishing control limits applies on all control charts. After choosing the distinctive attributes to be controlled, for example, for the standard deviation, predictable variation in the characteristic in samples of the size is estimated. These estimates are then used to formulate the control limits on the chart.

Types of Charts:

The charts are classified according to the quality characteristic they are hypothetical to monitor; there are control charts for variables and attributes. The following charts are constructed for controlling variables: https://cdn2.content.compendiumblog.com/uploads/user/458939f4-fe08-4dbc-b271-efca0f5a2682/6060c2db-f5d9-449b-abe2-68eade74814a/Image/b3d257b73b4b87a67be666bfdbe06eea/blogxbarrchart.jpg

In X-bar chart the sample mean are schemed to control the mean value of any variable.

In R chart the sample ranges are plotted for controlling the variation in a variable.

In S chart the sample standard deviation are plotted for controlling the variation in a variable.

For controlling characteristics that symbolize attributes of the product, the charts commonly constructed are:http://www.centerspace.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/c-chart-R.png

C chart is used for plotting the number of defects; per batch, per day, per feet, etc. The chart works on assumption that defects occurred in the quality attribute are rare, and control limits are computed on the basis of Poisson distribution.

U chart divides the number of defects by the number of units inspected for reaching to the conclusion. Distinct from C chart, this chart has no requirement for a constant number of units, is used with the batches of different sizes.

Np chart; uses the number of defects (per batch, per day,) for plotting like the C chart. Though, the control limits are not reliant on the distribution of rare events, but depends on the binomial distribution. Thus, NP chart is used if the occurrence of defects are regular, i.e. they occurs in approximately more than 5% of the units. http://www.icsolutions-us.com/files/npChart_Healthcare.jpg

P chart, shows the percent of defects (per batch, per day, etc.) as in U chart. Whereas, the control limits are not on the distribution of rare events but on the binomial distribution. Hence, P chart is applicable to conditions where the rate of defects is common.

Total Quality management:

TQM is a philosophy that integrates all organizational functions; such as marketing, finance, etc.; to focus on fulfilling customer needs to attain organizational objectives.

The objective of TQM is performing the right thing first time, and then every time. TQM is extremely flexible and adaptable. Although it was first applied to manufacturing operations and was only implemented in the manufacturing sector for a number of years, TQM is now becoming a generic management tool, implemented in the service and government sector organizations. Foundation of TQM activities includes:

Commitment of the senior management and other employees

Meeting customer requirements

Reducing development cycle times

Just in time/demand flow manufacturing

Improvement teams

Reducing product and service costs

Systems to facilitate improvement

Line management ownership

Employee involvement and empowerment

Recognition and celebration

Challenging quantified goals and benchmarking

Focus on processes / improvement plans

Specific incorporation in strategic planning

Elements of TQM:

Customer focused: Total quality management realizes that the level and efficiency of quality is mainly determined by the customers. Regardless of what work is done to implement quality processes and decision it’s highly depended on the consumer. Customer is the one in the end determining whether the effort was worthy or not.

Total employee involvement: All employees are required to participate in efforts to achieve common goals. It can be obtained only when fear has been driven out from the workstation, liberation has happened, and administration has been providing the suitable work environment. Work systems with high performance are integrated for continuous improvement efforts with normal business operations as well as work teams are one form of empowerment.

Process centered: An important part of TQM is to focus on process centered thinking. This is a series of steps in which inputs are taken from suppliers and transformed into outputs that are delivered to consumers. Steps are defined required to carry out the process, performance measures are monitored regularly for detecting unusual variations.

Integrated system: Though a business comprises of many dissimilar functional fortes; organized into well-structured divisions, it is the processes that interconnects these functions that are focused by TQM.

Strategic and systematic approach: Critical part of the TQM is the systematic approach of achieving an organization’s vision, mission, and goals. The process, is strategic planning or strategic management, and it includes the devising of a strategic plan that integrates; within the main functions of an organization; quality as a core component.

Continual improvement: The main concept of TQM evolve around continual process improvement. It helps an organization to be analytical and creative in finding and developing ways which will them to become more competitive and effective at meeting expectations.

Activates for Communication plan In TOTAL:

Activities

Required Predecessor

Analyze the situation

Reconfirm or set communication goals

Set efficiency targets

Decide on implementation strategy

Determine and specify the communication activities

Set budgets

Set evaluation methodology

Generate Communication activities

(none)

A

B

B

B

B, C, E

F

G

C

H

G

F

E

D

B

A