Chapter 6: Managing Quality

Defining Quality
Quality: the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears
on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.

Cost of Quality
 Prevention Costs: costs associated with reducing the potential for defective
parts or services.
 Appraisal Costs: costs related to evaluating products, processes, parts, and
services
 Internal Failure Costs: Costs that result from production of defective parts
or services before delivery to customers.
 External Failure Costs: costs that occur after delivery of defective parts or
services

Total Quality Management

TQM refers to a quality emphasis that encompasses the entire organization, from
supplier to customer.
 Striving for excellence
There are seven concepts for effective TQM:
1. Continuous improvement
2. Six Sigma
3. Employee empowerment
4. Benchmarking
5. Just-in Time
6. Taguchi concepts
7. Knowledge of TQM tools

Continuous improvement
The basis of this philosophy is that every aspect of an organization can be improved.
The end goal is perfection. Perfection is never achieved, but always sought.

PCDA Cycle
1. Plan
 Identify the problem and make a plan
2. Do
 Test the plan
3. Check
 Is the plan working?
4. Act
 Implement the plan, document.
Six Sigma
A program to save time, improve quality, and lower costs.

Six Sigma improvements Model:

 Defines the project’s purpose, scope, and outputs and then identify the
required process information, keeping in mind the customer’s definition
of quality.
 Measures the process and collects data
 Analyzes the data, ensuring repeatability and reproducibility
 Improves by modifying or redesigning existing processes or procedures
 Controls the new processes to make sure performance levels are
maintained.

Taguchi Concepts
Three quality concepts:
 Quality Robust products are products that can be produced uniformly and
consistently in adverse manufacturing and environmental conditions.
 Quality Loss Function identifies all costs connected with poor quality and
shows how these costs increase as the product moves away from being
exactly what the customer wants.
 Target-Oriented Quality is a philosophy of continuous improvement to
bring the product exactly on target

Tools for Generating Ideas

 Check Sheet: an organized method of collecting data
 Scatter Diagram: a graph of the value of one variable vs. another
 Cause-and-Effect Diagram: identifies process elements that may affect an
outcome

Tools for Organizing the Data

 Pareto Chart: a graph that identifies and plots problems or defects in
descending order of frequency.
 Flow Chart: a chart that describes steps in a process

Tools for Identifying Problems

 Histogram: a distribution that shows the frequency of occurrences of a
variable
 Statistical Process Control Chart: a chart with time on the horizontal axis
for plotting values of a statistic

Statistical Process Control

A process used to monitor standards, make measurements, and take corrective
actions as a product or service is being produced.
Control Charts
Graphic presentations of data over time that show upper and lower limits for the
processes we want to control

Source Inspection
 Source Inspection is controlling or monitoring at the point of production or
purchase-at the source. It is consistent with the concept of employee
empowerment, where individual employees self check their own work
 Poka-Yoke is a foolproof device or technique that ensures production of
good units every time
 Checklists are a type of poka-yoke to help ensure consistency and
completeness in carrying out a task

Inspection of Attributes vs. Variables

 Attribute inspection classifies items as being either good or defective. It
does not address the degree of failure.
 Variable inspection measures such dimensions as weight, speed, size, or
strength to see if an item falls within an acceptable range

TQM in Services
The personal component of services is more difficult to measure than the quality of
the tangible component.
What is very different about the selection of services is the poor definition of the:
 Intangible differences between products: the tangible components are
important because how well the product is designed and produce does make
a difference.
 The intangible expectations customers have for products