Quality, Quality Management System, Quality Assurance, Quality Improvement & Quality Terms

What is Quality ?

1. Quality is the degree to which a set inherent characteristics full fill requirements. 
2. Conformance to customer requirement, specifications and fitness for use is Quality.
3. Meeting the customer requirement is Quality.

Quality Management System (QMS):

A Quality Management system  can be expressed as the organizational structure, procedures, processes and resources  needed to implement quality management.

Ø  Quality Management System recognizes the importance of:

§  Customer Satisfaction

§  Prevention over Inspection

§  Continuous Improvement (PDCA)

§  Management Responsibility.

Quality Planning:

One of fundamental tenets of modern quality management is: Quality is planned, designed and built in-not inspected in.

Special Causes

- Considered unusual and preventable.

- Manufacturing process produced 250 defects per million due to assembly errors.

Common Causes

- Considered normal and acceptable

- Your manufacturing process considers one defect in a lot/doz. due to bad raw material.

Quality Control & Quality Assurance:

Quality Assurance:

The process of auditing quality requirements, and the results from the Quality Control measurements, to ensure quality standards and operational definitions are used/met.

- QA involves Quality Audits.

Quality Control (QC):

A process of monitoring and recording results ( both product and process management) of executing quality activities to assess performance and to recommend necessary changes.

- QC involves identifying ways to remove the causes of quality defect.

- Measure specific product results against the standards.

- Implement Approved Changes to Quality Base Line.

- Containment and Repair Defects.

- Quality Control involves Inspection and requires an understanding of Sampling Strategies, Tolerances and the causes of the variation in a process.

An Audit:  Audit is a structured review of the products Quality Management activities to determine if they comply with organizational policies, procedures and process.

Some Quality Terms:

Prevention – Keeping errors out of process.

Inspection – Keeping errors out of hands of the customer.

Attribute Sampling – Result conforms or Not

Variable Sampling – The result is rated on a continuous scale that measures the degree of conformity.

Tolerance – Specified range of acceptable limits control limits, Threshold, which can indicate whether the process is out of control.

Acceptance Sampling – Inspection of a sample from a lot to decide whether to accept that lot.

Six Sigma Quality – A Term generally used ti indicate process capabilities in terms of Process spread measured by standard deviations in a normally distributed process.