Intro to Quality

“the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfill requirements”, or conformance to requirements and fitness for use.

The project’s processes and products meet written specifications.

A product can be used as it was intended.

• Requires customer satisfaction
• Prefers prevention to inspection
• Recognizes management responsibility for quality

• Identifying which quality standards are relevant to the project and how best to satisfy those standards.
• Designing quality into the products of the project as well as the processes involved in managing the project.
• The size and complexity of quality management plans varies to meet project needs.

• Defining quality from the customer’s perspective.
• Constant increases in the level of quality of today’s goods and services.
• Difficulties encountered in managing service quality.
• Identifying quality dimensions that are most important to customers.
• Avoiding the costs of poor quality products and services.
• Customer loyalty that is increasingly based on quality.
• High quality required today needed to retain customers and for use in competitive strategy.

• Advocated Statistical Process Control (SPC)
• Methods which signal shifts in a process that will likely lead to products and/or services not meeting customer requirements.
• Emphasized an overall organizational approach to managing quality.
• Demonstrated that quality products are less costly than poor quality products.
• Identified 14 points critical for improving quality.

Framework for identifying quality components that are related to producing both high quality products and low quality components, with the goal of minimizing the total cost of quality.

• Detection/appraisal costs
• Internal failure costs; scrap and rework
• External failure costs; replacement, refund

• Leadership
• –Top management vision, planning and support

• Employee involvement
• –All employees assume responsibility for inspecting the quality of their work.

• Product/Process Excellence
• –Involves product design quality and monitoring the process for continuous improvement.

A concept that recognizes that quality improvement is a journey with no end and that there is a need for continually looking for new approaches for improving quality.

• Design quality
• Specific characteristics of a product that determine its value in the marketplace.

• Conformance quality
• The degree to which a product meets its design specifications.

• Lack of a company-wide definition of quality.
• Lack of a formalized strategic plan for change.
• Lack of a customer focus.
• Poor inter-organizational communication.
• Lack of real employee empowerment.
• Lack of employee trust in senior management.
• View of the quality program as a quick fix.
• Drive for short-term financial results.
• Politics and turf issues.

• The International Organization for Standardization
• –An international set of standards for documenting the processes that an organization uses to produce its goods and services.