Quality Assurance

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Quality Assurance

• Ideas and Tools for Meeting the Competitive
  Challenge

M. W. Piczak September, 2004
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Defining Quality

• No national standard
• Rarely agreement
• Many definitions including across organizations
• Often a matter of emphasis and choice of words
• Themes do emerge
• Must fashion own definition

Find your companys definition
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Some Definitions

• Zero defects
• Do it right the first time
• Excellence plus
• Fitness for use (Juran)
• Value for money
• Satisfying the customer
• Delighting the customer
• Reliability and consistency
• Conforming to requirements (Crosby)

Any more?
taken from Quality or Else, 1990
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Fitness for Use Linkages
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Quality of Design

• The bundle of benefits that designers aim to
  provide to consumers
• Collection of customer needs and wants
• Gathered by marketing
• The target
• Shown as specifications, tolerances
• Specifications for services also

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Good Design by

• Innovative
• Enhances products usefulness
• Displays logical structure of a product where
  form follows function
• Is unobtrusive
• Is honest
• Is enduring
• Is consistent right down to the details
• Is ecologically responsible
• Is minimal design

Examples?
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Can we overdesign?
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One Good Looking Metal Container
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How Many Cupholders are Required?
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Apparently 14
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The Evolution of Shaving
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(No Transcript)
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Where to?
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(No Transcript)
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Necessary?

• Cell phones that work under water
• Lincoln Continentals that lower 1 over 60mph to
  improve aerodynamics
• VCR/DVD features
• Windshield wipers on headlights
• VCR/DVD handsets
• Central Tire Inflation System on Hummers

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CTIS
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Service Specifications

• An airline industry example
• 90 of calls answered within 30 seconds
• 90 of passengers checked within x minutes
• 80 of flights delayed no more than 15 minutes
• Baggage claim time is 10 minutes between 1st and
  last customer
• Meal complaints lt 3
• Staff complaints lt1

Swissair, 1993
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Hitting the Target

• The degree to which you are able to consistently
  deliver on specs
• What should your quality standard be?
• 99.73 correct good enough?

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Your 99.73 Target

• gt 20,000 drug prescriptions wrong each year
• gt 15,000 babies dropped each year in hospitals
• No electricity, water or heat for 9 hours each
  year
• 500 incorrect surgical procedures done each week
• 2,000 pieces of mail would be lost each hour

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6 Sigma 3.4 ppm

• The journey is toward 3.4 ppm
• Few companies there
• Local company Palnutt Tinnerman operates at 1/20
  million defective
• 1 defects is 10,000 ppm

Literature reference has been made to measuring
in ppb
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6 Sigma in Golfing Perspective

• In golfing terms
• 2 sigma missing 6 putts per round
• 3 sigma missing 1 putt per round
• 4 sigma missing 1 putt every 9 rounds
• 5 sigma missing 1 putt every 2.33 years
• 6 sigma missing 1 putt every 163 years
• All of this is based on playing 100 rounds per
  year
• What sigma level are you at?

Most companies are around 3-4 sigma
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Ethical Elements

• Courtesy
• Honesty
• Safety
• Environmentally sensitive

Positive Negative Examples?
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Structural Elements

• Strength
• Viscosity
• Hardness
• Structural integrity
• Machinability
• Flatness
• Durability

Positive Negative Examples?
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Sensory Elements

• Appeals to the senses including
• Visual
• Aural
• Taste
• Touch
• Smell
• Aesthetics of presentation
• Packaging
• Image

Positive Negative Examples?
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Timeliness Elements

• On time arrival
• On time departure
• Reliability of delivery
• JIT

Positive Negative Examples?
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Commercial Element

• Warranties
• Guarantees
• Returnability
• Repairability
• Source of manufacture
• Union made?

Positive Negative Examples?
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Customer Delight

• Having your Saturn vehicle washed anytime you
  want during the first ownership experience
• Netting the trunks of cars
• Having your shoes shined after each repair
• Lighted key ignition area
• Repairman on time
• Tilden comes to door to pick you up
• A bureaucratic exercises a judgment in your favour

Any others come to mind?
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As it should be

• Customer delight is simply doing good by the
  customer where they are surprised to the extent
  someone did not give them a hard time
• Thinking like a customer

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The Slippery Slope

• During 80s, much self doubt
• North America taking beating at hands of Japanese
  
• No product categories exempt (cars, electronics,
  ship building, motorcycles)

Does anyone get it right?
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American Winners

• Phillip Morris
• Rugged Outdoor Shoes
• All purpose lubricants (WD-40)
• Artificial sweeteners
• Desktop computers
• Bulldozers
• Supercomputers
• Large tractors combines
• Fast food
• Jeans
• Advanced education
• motorcycles

• Razors
• Soft drinks
• Washers, dryers
• Industrial controls
• Amusement parks
• Movie making
• Instant photography
• Mechanical writing instruments
• 24/7 news
• Large aircraft
• Helicopters
• minivans

Arguably
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Canadian Winners

• Dofasco
• Electronic devices
• Istec WESCAM camera
• Whistler Mountain
• Canadian Prosthetics Foundation
• CANDU reactors
• Soft drinks
• Mining equipment
• Telecom equipment
• RIM

• Fox 40 whistle
• CAE Engineering
• Medical Services (MUMC)
• Environment products (Zenon)
• Space products (SPAR)
• Wines
• Beer
• Consulting engineering (Acres)

Arguably
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How Good Do You Have to Be? Part 1

• Two hikers are going down a trail in the
  mountains when they meet up with a grizzly bear.
• One promptly stops to take off his big hiking
  boots and put on his running shoes.
• The second gives him an astonished look and
  comments are you crazy, you cant outrun a
  grizzly bear.
• Says the first hiker I dont have to I only
  have to outrun you

Nice guy
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How Good Do You Have to Be? Part 2

• You dont want to be considered just the best at
  what you do
• You want to be known as the ONLY ones who do what
  you do?

Any products come to mind?
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QA Tools Alphabet Soup

• ZD (zero defects)
• TQM
• ISO/QS/TS 9000, 14000, 18000, 16949
• Lean
• 6 ? (sigma)
• DOE/GRR/APQP/FMEA/QFD
• SPC
• CoQ (Costs of quality)
• CQI
• SDWTs/QCCs
• And more

Pick a few stick with them
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Why Hustle?

• Every morning as the sun peeks over the african
  veldt, an antelope awakens. It knows that it must
  run faster than the fastest lion or be eaten.
• At the same time, a lion opens its eyes. It knows
  it must outrun the slowest antelope or it will
  starve.
• It matters not whether youre an antelope or a
  lion. When the sun comes up, youd better be
  running.

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A Caveat Not for Us

• Many departments will argue that SPC/6 Sigma are
  fine and have a rightful/necessary home in
  operations
• SPC/6 Sigma dont apply to staff or support
  departments

True or False?
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SPC Applications

• City government
• Hospital operations
• Fighting crime
• Industrial safety
• Accounts receivable
• Inventory management (ABC analysis)
• Immigration procedures
• Traffic safety

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When Does it End?

• We never reach the end of anything
• George Eastman, circa 1930

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Cruel or what?

• Quality is a race without a finish line

unattributed
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Its About Survival, Isnt It?

• Remember, you dont have to do any of these
  things
• Survival is not mandatory.
• W. Edwards Deming, circa 1970

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Quality Assurance

• Ideas and Tools for Meeting the Competitive
  Challenge

M. W. Piczak September, 2004
The End, for now
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