Quality and Quality Control

Definition of Quality

• Quality is closely allied to cost and customer needs.
• Quality is defined as fitness for purpose at lowest cost.
• It is the ‘totality of features and characteristics’ that satisfy both explicit and implicit customer needs.
• Quality is a degree of perfection and can be judged or realized by comparing with standards.

Quality Control

• Quality Control is a systematic control of various factors that affect the quality of the product.
• It includes material, tools, machines, labor, working conditions, and measuring instruments.
• Quality Control ensures that the operation will produce the optimum quality products at minimum cost.
• It is concerned with making things right rather than discovering and rejecting those made wrong.

Factors Affecting Quality

• Men, materials, machines, and manufacturing conditions affect product quality.
• Additional factors include market research, money, management, and production methods and product design.

Objectives of Quality Control

• To decide on the standard of quality that is easily acceptable to the customer and economical to maintain.
• To improve the standard of quality of the product.
• To solve any deviations in the quality of the product during manufacturing.
• To ensure that only products of uniform and standard quality are sold.

Functions of Quality Control Department

• To suggest methods to prevent manufacturing difficulties.
• To reject defective goods.
• To find out where control is breaking down and investigate the causes.
• To correct rejected goods, if possible.

Advantages of Quality Control

• Improved product quality increases sales.
• Scrap rejection and rework are minimized, reducing waste and manufacturing costs.
• Good quality products improve reputation.
• Inspection costs are reduced.
• Uniformity in quality can be achieved.
• Manufacturer and consumer relations are improved.

Total Quality Management (TQM)

• TQM is a management strategy aimed at embedding awareness of quality in all organizational processes.
• It involves the entire organization, supply chain, and/or product life cycle.
• TQM is composed of three paradigms: Total, Quality, and Management.
• It is defined as both a philosophy and a set of guiding principles that represent the foundation of a continuously improving organization.

Origin and Evolution of TQM

• The concept of Quality Control emerged in the United States in 1920.
• The philosophy of TQM was developed in Japan in the 1960s by Dr. W. Edward Deming and Dr. J.M. Juran.
• In the 1980s to 1990s, a new phase of quality control and management began, known as Total Quality Management (TQM).

Elements of TQM

• Sustained management commitment to quality.
• Total focus on the customer.
• Preventing rather than detecting defects.
• Universal quality responsibility.
• Quality measurement.
• Continuous improvement.
• Root cause corrective actions.
• Employees' involvement and empowerment.

Learn about the definition of quality and its relation to customer needs, as well as the principles of quality control and its importance in product development.