Quality Management for Enterprises, Products and Programs

In this unit we are going to cover quality planning, the first part of the quality trilogy.

By planning for both product and process up front, much waste and inefficiency can be avoided.

The six sigma techniques were originally developed for quality improvement projects. The tools and methods covered here have been adapted for quality planning and product innovation.

Improvement happens every day, even in poorly performing organizations. This is how businesses survive, at least in the short term. But to thrive and become an industry leader, organizations need significant changes and results.

Breakthrough projects are initiated and implemented during the Quality Improvement portion of the timeline and result in the new zone of quality control.

Unfortunately, many organizations that are forced to cut costs don’t have the processes and tools in place to do so effectively and often resort to arbitrary reductions in workforce headcount. That often leads to situations where fewer numbers of people are required to perform the same amount of output.

The first step in mobilizing for breakthrough is to establish the organization’s executive quality council. The basic responsibility of this council is to launch, coordinate, and institutionalize annual breakthroughs.

The quality control process is a universal managerial process for conducting operations to provide stability, prevent adverse change, and maintain the status quo.

The term quality control often refers to broadening the approach to achieving quality from after-the-fact inspection to what we now call prevention or proactive control.

Planning for Control is the activity that provides the system, or the concepts, methodologies and tools, through which company personnel can keep the operating processes stable and thereby produce the product features required to meet customer needs.

Industry Standards, especially ISO 9001, have had great impact on the implementation of international trade and quality systems by organizations worldwide. These standards have been applied in a wide range of industries, economic sectors, and government regulatory areas.

In this unit we are going to cover the basics of data analytics using statistical tools and methods, and then we will shift to a discussion on benchmarking.

Statistical methods are essential in the modern approach to quality. Variation is a fact of nature and a fact of business life.

The main objective of benchmarking is to identify superior performance internal or external to your organization, determine the nature of and reasons for this performance, and determine if there are gaps in your organization to this performance.

Irrespective of the type of benchmarking undertaken, it is essential that a well-structured and systematic process be followed to realize these critical success factors.

I will cover principles of the lean approach, and then an overview of Six Sigma. I will cover in detail the five steps of Six Sigma, often referred to by their initials DMAIC, and how Lean and Six Sigma can be deployed successfully in the organization.

Lean focuses on optimizing systems first by reducing costs and improving efficiency, and second by eliminating non-value-added activities.

Six Sigma provides reliable, consistent, dependable products to customers. The process focuses on three things: defects, variability, and the customer. Six Sigma drives a level of no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities.

The five steps of the Six Sigma methodology are Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control, usually referred to as DMAIC.

By integrating lean principles into the DMAIC steps of Six Sigma, organizations can provide a roadmap for Lean Six Sigma to focus on efficiency and effectiveness in the context of continuous improvement.

The activities to integrate quality into business functions must provide personnel with the knowledge of what they are supposed to do, knowledge of what they are actually doing, and a process that can meet specifications and can be regulated.

Activities to integrate quality in service planning have two objectives: to incorporate product features and to prevent defects. The basic steps for controlling quality can be applied to service operations, and process quality audits apply to any activity that can affect final service quality.

The activities to integrate quality in manufacturing planning have two objectives: to prevent defects and to minimize variability. The key factors of dominance in manufacturing are setup, time, component, worker, and information.

Evaluating supplier quality capabilities involves qualifying the supplier’s design and manufacturing processes. A certified supplier is one who, after extensive investigation, supplies material of such quality that routine testing on each lot received is not necessary.