Quality Assurance & Quality Control In search of ZERO faults

…. some quotes Peter Drucker: ‘There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all’. Thomas Jefferson: Quotes on Quality ‘Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching’. Gucci Family Slogan ‘Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten’. C. G. Campbell: ‘Quality isn't something that can be argued into a product or promised into it. It must be put there. If it isn't put there, the finest sales talk in the world won't act as a substitute.

Quality Assurance  Quality Assurance checks the systems which make the products before, during and after manufacture.  It ensures that consistency is achieved and that it meets the required standard.  Factors that are consistently monitored include:  Equipment  Materials  Processes  Staff expertise/training  The customer is an important part of QA system and may well be involved in monitoring at various stages.

The Differences - definitions  Quality Assurance - The term Quality Assurance, as used in the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission comprises all those planned and systematic actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that a structure, system, or component will perform satisfactorily in service. Quality assurance includes quality control, which comprises those quality assurance actions related to the physical characteristics of a material, structure, component, or system which provide a means to control the quality of the material, structure, component, or system to predetermined requirements.  Quality Control - engineering and manufacturing, quality control and quality engineering are involved in developing systems to ensure products or services are designed and produced to meet or exceed customer requirements. These systems are often developed in conjunction with other business and engineering disciplines using a cross-functional approach.

Quality Assurance Activities  Quality assurance covers all activities from design, development, production, installation, servicing and documentation. This introduced the rules: "fit for purpose" and "do it right the first time".  It includes the regulation of the quality of raw materials, assemblies, products and components; services related to production; and management, production, and inspection processes.  One of the most widely used paradigms for QA management is the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) approach, also known as the Shewhart cycle.

….an easy way to remember?

Failure Testing  A valuable process to perform on a whole consumer product is failure testing, the operation of a product until it fails, often under stresses such as increasing vibration, temperature and humidity.  This exposes many unanticipated weaknesses in a product, and the data is used to drive engineering and manufacturing process improvements.  Often quite simple changes can dramatically improve product service, such as changing to mould-resistant paint or adding lock-washer placement to the training for new assembly personnel.

Quality Control  Quality control is a series of checks which are carried out on a product as it is made.  The checks are made to make sure that each product meets a specific standard.  The most common tests on a product involve:

QC - Testing  Testing is an important part of the manufacture of a product and can take place at any time during production.  Example: an injection moulded plastic bottle top could be tested after 10, 1000 or of them have been produced. Test would include:  Checking its diameter  Thickness  Thread (does it screw on properly)

Tolerances  As every day products cannot be guaranteed to accurately meet the specifications when produced in large quantities, a tolerance has to be applied.  This specifies the minimum and maximum measurements.  Analysis of tolerance tests can signal the imminent failure of a machine and can help to achieve the ultimate aim of quality control which is ZERO faults.

Total Quality Control  Total Quality Control is the most necessary inspection control of all in cases where, despite statistical quality control techniques or quality improvements implemented, sales decrease.  The major problem, which leads to, a decrease in sales was that the specifications did not include the most important factor, “What the customer required”.  The major characteristics, ignored during the search to improve manufacture and overall business performance were: > Reliability > Maintainability > Safety