What The Heck You Should Know About Quality Engineering?

Preface

In the quality management job, a significant activity is in constantly improving the quality of the business, such that products and services get better and better whilst costs go down and people in the business are motivated, loyal and proud of their work

Because quality is such a vital part of your business processes, isn’t it time to make quality management part of your business solution? Given that ensuring the right quality level isn’t just a task for the quality department—but for all personnel—it’s even more obvious: quality management belongs in your business system. Not anywhere else.

So, if you’re looking to balance quality with productivity, reduce scrap-related costs, increase yield and enhance productivity—you know what to do. Make quality part of your system.

We all can improve our understanding of the functions of quality assurance and quality control.

One also should require adequate Quality Skills. And one should require those associated with quality activities to meet minimum standards of training and experience.

Researchers have found that Adults remember just 20% of what they hear and only 30% of what they see 72 hours after the training. But, they will remember 70% of what they repeat and 90% of what they repeat and perform. More Revisions of Training mean More Memory! So, it is vital to have your Training Within Industry to be strong and effective.

The Business World is going through tough time throughout the world. Tough Times are the Time for Operational Excellence. This is the time to improve the skills of the employees in every faculty of the organization. Current business environment requires each employee to be familiar with multiple skill sets. Sending each and every employee to acquire or even brush-up many skills will be a big burden on the operational budget. Organizations should be prudent in their expenses and at the same time need skills to excel in their operation during the uncertain time.

From my more than 20 years of experience Quality Engineering, I found that employees need both old and new skills to contribute effectively through their work functions. I have researched lot of Presentations by both Businesses and Academics on 50 of areas of skills which are important for employees from top to bottom of any organization. Each area contains several different presentations. These Presentations will give Business Processes great ideas from the experience of successful organizations and the researches in the Academics field. You have the choice to select the presentations which are relevant to the Business Process of individual organization. You may use them for a long time to come because going through these Presentations will make employee more effective.

3P - Production Preparation Process

Lean experts typically view 3P as one of the most powerful and transformative advanced manufacturing tools, and it is typically only used by organizations that have experience implementing other lean methods. Whereas kaizen and other lean methods take a production process as a given and seek to make improvements, the Production Preparation Process (3P) focuses on eliminating waste through product and process design.

3P seeks to meet customer requirements by starting with a clean product development slate to rapidly create and test potential product and process designs that require the least time, material, and capital resources. This method typically involves a diverse group of individuals in a multi-day creative process to identify several alternative ways to meet the customer's needs using different product or process designs. 3P typically results in products that are less complex, easier to manufacture (often referred to as design for manufacturability), and easier to use and maintain. 3P can also design production processes that eliminate multiple process steps and that utilize homemade, right-sized equipment that better meet production needs.

Ultimately, 3P methods represent a dramatic shift from the continuous, incremental improvement of existing processes sought with kaizen events. Instead, 3P offers potential to make quantum leap design improvements that can improve performance and eliminate waste to a level beyond that which can be achieved through the continual improvement of existing processes.

With 3P, the teams spend several days (with singular focus on the 3P event) working to develop multiple alternatives for each process step and evaluating each alternative against manufacturing criteria (e.g., designated takt time) and a preferred cost. The goal is typically to develop a process or product design that meets customer requirements best in the least waste way. The typical steps in a 3P event are described below.

Define Product or Process Design Objectives/Needs: The team seeks to understand the core customer needs that need to be met. If a product or product prototype is available, the project team breaks it down into component parts and raw materials to assess the function that each plays.

Diagramming: A fishbone diagram or other type of illustration is created to demonstrate the flow from raw material to finish product. The project team then analyzes each branch of the diagram (or each illustration) and brainstorms key words (e.g., roll, rotate, form, bend) to describe the change (or transformation) made at each branch.

Find and Analyze Examples in Nature: The project team then tries to find examples of each process keyword in the natural world. For example, forming can be found in nature when a heavy animal such as an elephant walks on mud, or when water pressure shapes rocks in a river. Similar examples are grouped and examples that best exemplify the process key word researched to better understand how the examples occur in nature. Here, team members place heavy emphasis on how nature works in the example and why. Once the unique qualities of the natural process are dissected, team members then discuss how the natural process can be applied to the given manufacturing process step.

Sketch and Evaluate the Process: Sub-teams are formed and each sub-tea member is required to draw different ways to accomplish the process in question. Each of the sketches is evaluated and the best is chosen (along with any good features from the sketches that are not chosen) for a mock-up.

Build, Present, and Select Process Prototypes: The team prototypes and then evaluates the chosen process, spending several days (if necessary) working with different variations of the mock-up to ensure it will meet criteria.

Hold Design Review: Once a concept has been selected for additional refinement, it is presented to a larger group (including the original product designers) for feedback.

Develop Project Implementation plan: If the project is selected to proceed, the team selects a project implementation leader who helps determine the schedule, process, resource requirements, and distribution of responsibilities for completion

5S Workplace Organization

5S is a reference to five Japanese words that describe standardized cleanup:

Seiri : tidiness, organization. Refers to the practice of sorting through all the tools, materials, etc., in the work area and keeping only essential items. Everything else is stored or discarded. This leads to fewer hazards and less clutter to interfere with productive work.

Seiton : orderliness. Focuses on the need for an orderly workplace. Tools, equipment, and materials must be systematically arranged for the easiest and most efficient access. There must be a place for everything, and everything must be in its place.

Seiso : cleanliness. Indicates the need to keep the workplace clean as well as neat. Cleaning in Japanese companies is a daily activity. At the end of each shift, the work area is cleaned up and everything is restored to its place.

Seiketsu : standards. Allows for control and consistency. Basic housekeeping standards apply everywhere in the facility. Everyone knows exactly what his or her responsibilities are. Housekeeping duties are part of regular work routines.

Shitsuke : sustaining discipline. Refers to maintaining standards and keeping the facility in safe and efficient order day after day, year after year.

Often in the west, alternative terms are used to disguise the Japanese origins of the methodology. These are Sort, Straighten, Shine, Systemise and Sustain and Safety as a 6th optional S. These were arguably derived to prevent 5S from being perceived as yet another Japanese improvement process in an era when western industry was already being overwhelmed by strategies to combat foreign business.

Alternative Americanizations have also been introduced, such as CANDO (Cleanup, Arranging, Neatness, Discipline, and Ongoing improvement). Even though he refers to the ensemble practice as 5S in his canonical work, 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace, Hirano prefers the terms Organization, Orderliness, Cleanliness, Standardized Cleanup, and Discipline because they are better translations than the alliterative approximations. There is a photo of a Japanese sign in 5 Pillars that shows the latin 5S mixed with Kanji.

Additional practices are frequently added to 5S, under such headings as 5S Plus, 6S, 5S+2S, 7S, etc. The most common additional S is for Safety mentioned above.

7 Quality Control Tools

Production environments that utilize modern quality control methods are dependent upon statistical literacy. The tools used therein are called the seven quality control tools. These include:

Checksheet

The function of a checksheet is to present information in an efficient, graphical format. This may be accomplished with a simple listing of items. However, the utility of the checksheet may be significantly enhanced, in some instances, by incorporating a depiction of the system under analysis into the form.

Pareto Chart

Pareto charts are extremely useful because they can be used to identify those factors that have the greatest cumulative effect on the system, and thus screen out the less significant factors in an analysis. Ideally, this allows the user to focus attention on a few important factors in a process.

They are created by plotting the cumulative frequencies of the relative frequency data (event count data), in descending order. When this is done, the most essential factors for the analysis are graphically apparent, and in an orderly format.

Flowchart

Flowcharts are pictorial representations of a process. By breaking the process down into its constituent steps, flowcharts can be useful in identifying where errors are likely to be found in the system.

Cause and Effect Diagram

This diagram, also called an Ishikawa diagram (or fish bone diagram), is used to associate multiple possible causes with a single effect. Thus, given a particular effect, the diagram is constructed to identify and organize possible causes for it.

The primary branch represents the effect (the quality characteristic that is intended to be improved and controlled) and is typically labelled on the right side of the diagram. Each major branch of the diagram corresponds to a major cause (or class of causes) that directly relates to the effect. Minor branches correspond to more detailed causal factors. This type of diagram is useful in any analysis, as it illustrates the relationship between cause and effect in a rational manner.

Histogram

Histograms provide a simple, graphical view of accumulated data, including its dispersion and central tendency. In addition to the ease with which they can be constructed, histograms provide the easiest way to evaluate the distribution of data.

Scatter Diagram

Scatter diagrams are graphical tools that attempt to depict the influence that one variable has on another. A common diagram of this type usually displays points representing the observed value of one variable corresponding to the value of another variable.

Control Chart

The control chart is the fundamental tool of statistical process