Quality Control for Dummies

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ISBN: 9780470069097 | 0470069090
Cover: Paperback
Copyright: 3/27/2012

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So you've been asked to lead a quality control initiative? Or maybe you've been assigned to a quality team. Perhaps you're a CEO whose main concern is to make your company faster, more efficient, and less expensive. Whatever your role is, quality control is a critical concept in every industry and profession. Quality Control For Dummies is the straightforward, easy guide to improving your company's quality. It covers all of today's available options and provides expert techniques for introducing quality methods to your company, collecting data, designing quality processes, and more. This hands-on guide gives you all the tools you'll ever need to enhance your company's quality, including: Understanding the importance of quality standards Putting fundamental quality control methods to use Listening to your customer about quality issues Whipping quality control into shape with Lean Working with value stream mapping Focusing on the 5S method Supplement a process with Kanban Fixing tough problems with Six Sigma Using QFD to win customers over Improving you company with TOC This invaluable reference is written from an unbiased viewpoint, giving you all the facts about each theory with no fuzzy coverings. It also includes steps for incorporating quality into a new product and Web sites packed with quality control tips and techniques. With Quality Control For Dummies, you'll be able to speed up production, eliminate waste, and save money!

Introduction	p. 1
About This Book	p. 1
Conventions Used in This Book	p. 1
What You're Not to Read	p. 2
Foolish Assumptions	p. 2
How This Book Is Organized	p. 2
Understanding the Basics of Quality Control	p. 3
Putting Fundamental Quality Control Methods to Use	p. 3
Whipping Quality Control into Shape with Lean Processes	p. 3
Surveying Other Quality Control Techniques	p. 4
The Part of Tens	p. 4
Icons Used in This Book	p. 4
Where to Go from Here	p. 4
Understanding the Basics of Quality Control	p. 7
Defining and Explaining Quality Control	p. 9
Looking at Different Definitions of "Quality"	p. 10
A customer-based definition of quality	p. 10
The statistical definition of quality	p. 11
Setting Quality Standards	p. 11
Preventing Errors with Quality Assurance	p. 11
Controlling Quality with Inspection	p. 12
Applying Fundamental Quality Control Concepts	p. 12
Introducing quality control to your business	p. 13
Listening to your customers	p. 13
Measuring your quality	p. 14
Evaluating your quality	p. 14
Trimming Down with Lean Processes	p. 15
Value Stream Mapping	p. 15
The 5S method	p. 16
Rapid Improvement Events	p. 16
Lean Materials and Kanban	p. 16
Checking Out Additional Quality Control Techniques	p. 17
Total Quality Management	p. 17
Six Sigma	p. 17
Quality Function Deployment	p. 18
The Theory of Constraints	p. 18
Understanding the Importance of Ouality Standards	p. 19
Getting the Quality Just Right	p. 19
Falling short: The cost of offering too little	p. 20
Overshooting: Providing too much	p. 21
Setting Quality Standards as the Rules of the Road	p. 22
Defining quality standards	p. 22
Creating quality standards	p. 23
Surveying quality governing bodies	p. 24
Recognizing the Roles of Quality Standards in Commerce	p. 25
Communicating customers' requirements	p. 26
Cutting costs	p. 26
Ensuring safety	p. 26
Securing ISO Certification	p. 27
Looking at the basics of ISO certification	p. 27
Checking out ISO standards	p. 29
Examining the requirements for ISO 9000	p. 29
Preparing for ISO 9001 certification	p. 30
Sweating through an ISO audit	p. 31
Using Quality Assurance for the Best Results	p. 33
Understanding the Concept of Quality Assurance	p. 33
Recognizing how quality assurance differs from quality control	p. 34
Catching errors before they occur	p. 35
Developing Trusted Suppliers	p. 36
Verifying quality with a supplier self-survey	p. 37
Knowing your responsibilities as a buyer	p. 38
Focusing on the Process with Plan-Do-Check-Act	p. 41
The major stages of the PDCA Cycle	p. 41
Tools for working through each PDCA stage	p. 43
Getting What You Really Need with Product or Service Specifications	p. 44
Creating clear specifications	p. 45
Avoiding extras in specifications	p. 46
The Role of Inspection in Quality Control	p. 47
Examining the Basics of Inspection	p. 47
The definition of "defect"	p. 48
The importance of catching bad products before your customers do	p. 48
The heart of inspection: Attribute and variable data	p. 49
Recognizing and Addressing the Challenges of Quality Inspection	p. 50
Getting a grip on the human aspect of inspection	p. 50
Totaling the expenses of inspection	p. 51
Jumping over other inspection hurdles	p. 51
Choosing the Inspection Approach That Fits Your Company's Needs	p. 52
Considering different factors as you select an inspection process	p. 53
Checking out zero and 100% inspection	p. 54
Surveying lot sampling	p. 54
Tracking Defects to Improve Your Business	p. 56
Following trends in your process	p. 56
Keeping careful records	p. 57
Calculating the cost of rework	p. 59
Putting Fundamental Quality Control Methods to Use	p. 61
Starting Down the Road to Quality	p. 63
What's New? Introducing Change in Your Company	p. 63
Having a Sponsor as a Champion of Quality Control	p. 64
Deciding on the sponsor	p. 65
Understanding the roles of the sponsor	p. 65
Talk About It: Quality Communication within an Organization	p. 68
Listing the types of information to communicate	p. 68
Determining who communicates different types of information	p. 69
Creating a stakeholder reporting matrix	p. 70
Class Is in Session: Training Employees	p. 71
Ensuring consistency with formal training	p. 72
Rounding out skills with informal training	p. 74
Testing the Waters with a Pilot Project	p. 76
Choosing the right pilot project	p. 76
Succeeding early with results from the pilot project	p. 77
Conquering Obstacles as Your Company Implements Change	p. 78
Staying ahead of potential problems	p. 78
Getting back on track	p. 79
Detecting the Voice of the Customer in Quality Issues	p. 81
Identifying Critical-to-Customer Quality Issues	p. 82
Product or service performance: I want it perfect!	p. 82
Delivery: I want it fast!	p. 83
Cost: I want it cheap!	p. 83
Gauging Current Customer Desires with the Kano Model	p. 84
Surveying the Kano Model's categories	p. 85
Using the Kano Model in a few easy steps	p. 85
Digging Up Data from (And about) Your Customers	p. 87
Following some important rules	p. 88
Putting surveys to work	p. 89
Using focus groups properly	p. 90
Tracking with a CRM system	p. 92
Borrowing from what competitors got right	p. 93
Examining other ways to seek feedback and information	p. 93
Preparing to Measure Your Current Quality Process	p. 95
Mapping Out Metrics and Measuring Processes	p. 95
Making sense of metrics	p. 96
Putting measurement processes under the microscope	p. 97
Equipping Yourself with Tools of the Measurement Trade	p. 100
Getting a handle on hand tools	p. 101
Allowing a gauge to do your measuring tricks	p. 101
Checking out coordinate measuring machines	p. 105
Collecting Your Quality Data	p. 107
Planning and Instituting a Data-Collection Process	p. 108
Knowing exactly what data you're looking for	p. 108
Working out the data-collection details	p. 112
Ensuring that everyone measures the same way	p. 113
Confirming the quality of your data	p. 117
Absorbing the costs of data collection	p. 121
Making Sense of Your Data	p. 122
Coding the data	p. 123
Using pivot tables	p. 123
Developing useful data charts	p. 125
Evaluating Quality with Statistics	p. 131
By the Numbers: Discovering the Basics of Statistics in Quality	p. 132
The story that statistics can tell you about quality	p. 132
The statistics terms that you need to know	p. 133
Just One of Many: Delving into the Details of Sampling	p. 134
Understanding why sampling is a smart idea	p. 134
Examining the factors related to selecting a sample size	p. 135
Recognizing the importance of random sampling	p. 136
More Bang for Your Buck: Using Pareto Analysis	p. 137
Creating a Pareto chart	p. 137
Interpreting a Pareto chart	p. 140
The Positive and the Negative: Coming Up with Correlations	p. 143
What exactly is a correlation?	p. 143
How do you determine and use a correlation?	p. 144
Let Me Guess: Predicting Values with Regression Analysis	p. 148
Getting the gist of regression analysis	p. 148
Performing a regression analysis	p. 149
Using the results of a regression analysis	p. 151
Consistency Counts: Analyzing Variance	p. 151
Identifying a variance issue	p. 151
Calculating and using variance	p. 152
Assessing Quality with Statistical Process Control	p. 155
Grasping the Basics of Statistical Process Control	p. 155
The importance of the normal curve	p. 156
Useful tools for calculating and plotting within SPC	p. 158
The pros and cons of SPC	p. 159
Using Control Charts Effectively	p. 161
Detecting different types of variation	p. 161
Understanding a control chart's elements	p. 162
Checking out different kinds of control charts	p. 164
Building a control chart	p. 165
Reading a control chart	p. 169
Responding to different types of variation	p. 170
Changing your control limits	p. 173
Calculating Process Capability	p. 173
Identifying a process's capability	p. 174
Moving a process closer to customer specifications	p. 175
Whipping Quality Control into Shape with Lean Processes	p. 177
Gathering the Nuts and Bolts of Lean Processes	p. 179
Boning Up on the Lean Basics	p. 179
Considering Lean cornerstones	p. 180
Taking important steps for getting Lean and mean	p. 181
Weighing the pros and cons of Lean	p. 184
Identifying the Seven Wastes That Can Plague a Process	p. 186
Waste of overproduction	p. 186
Waste of waiting	p. 187
Waste of unnecessary transportation	p. 188
Waste from unneeded processing steps	p. 189
Waste of excess inventory	p. 189
Waste of unnecessary motion	p. 190
Waste of defective products	p. 191
Moving to the Beat of Takt Time	p. 192
Listening to customer demand	p. 192
Setting the process tempo and considering process design	p. 193
Balancing for a smooth flow	p. 195
Getting to the Heart of an Issue with the 5 "Why's"	p. 195
Digging to find the real problem	p. 195
Establishing a good environment for asking "why"	p. 197
Keeping Your Eyes on the Process: Value Stream Mapping	p. 199
Sketching the Basics of Value Stream Mapping	p. 199
Breaking down the definition of VSM	p. 200
Examining important VSM attributes	p. 201
Walking through the basic steps to create a Value Stream Map	p. 201
Checking out the advantages of VSM	p. 202
To the Drawing Board: Creating a Current State Map	p. 203
Eyeing icons	p. 204
Mapping the flow of materials and information	p. 204
Grouping products and services into families to simplify mapping	p. 207
Do It Over: Building a Future State Map	p. 209
Evaluating value-added steps and non-value-added steps	p. 209
Constructing a future state map with your newfound knowledge	p. 210
Taking action after finishing your future state map	p. 211
Focusing on the 5S Method	p. 213
Understanding the Pros and Cons of 5S	p. 214
The pros	p. 214
The cons	p. 215
Rolling Out 5S with Communications Boards	p. 215
Establishing a facility communications board	p. 216
Starting a status board for each department	p. 216
The Sort Phase: Separating the Gravel from the Gems	p. 220
Preparing to sort	p. 221
Sorting everything with ease	p. 222
The Straighten Phase: A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place	p. 223
Tidying tools and materials	p. 223
Putting away personal items	p. 224
Labeling items	p. 225
Drawing up "after" floor plans and charts	p. 225
The Shine Phase: Polishing It All Up!	p. 228
Gathering the necessary equipment	p. 228
Recognizing that common areas belong to everyone	p. 229
Cleaning as you go	p. 229
Addressing maintenance issues and fixing problems at the source	p. 230
The Standardize Phase: Using the Best Practices Everywhere	p. 231
The Sustain Phase: Upholding the Gains	p. 232
Stressing that 5S is permanent	p. 232
Keeping up with responsibilities	p. 233
Doing a daily checkup	p. 233
Auditing the ongoing results	p. 234
Empowering Workers to Make Changes with Rapid Improvement	p. 235
Considering the Pros and Cons of Rapid Improvement Events	p. 236
The pluses of RIEs	p. 236
The minuses of RIEs	p. 237
Seek and Improve: Selecting a Process Victim	p. 237
Identifying a problematic process	p. 238
Concentrating on tasks within the process	p. 238
Finding a Few Good Workers: Staffing an Improvement Team	p. 239
Workers are the heart of the team	p. 239
An experienced leader is essential	p. 240
Managers also have a role to play	p. 241
Before the Fun Really Starts: Documenting the Current Process	p. 241
Drawing a map of the process flow	p. 241
Discovering what the work instructions say	p. 242
Following a worker through the process	p. 243
Baselining the process performance	p. 243
The First Day of the Event: Train the Team	p. 245
Surveying important presentations	p. 246
Creating and updating lists and maps	p. 248
The Second Day: Review the Training and Clean the Work Area	p. 249
The Third Day: Draft the Improvement Plan	p. 250
The Fourth Day: Test Changes and Document the Results	p. 251
Taking the revised process for some test drives	p. 251
Documenting your tests and research	p. 252
The Fifth Day: Finalize Changes and Report to Management	p. 253
One Week Later: Did the RIE Make a Difference?	p. 254
Looking at Lean Materials and Kanban	p. 255
Getting the Gist of Lean Materials and Kanban	p. 256
Contemplating the concept of Lean Materials	p. 257
Supplementing a process with Kanban	p. 258
Monitoring a great debate: Push versus Pull	p. 260
Reviewing the Pros and Cons of Lean Materials	p. 263
The pros	p. 263
The cons	p. 264
Going with the Flow of Lean Materials	p. 265
Packing materials in the best containers	p. 267
Setting up "supermarkets"	p. 269
Arranging for smooth deliveries and working environments	p. 269
Working with Suppliers to Keep Lean Materials on Track	p. 270
Encouraging supplier involvement to control costs	p. 271
Convincing suppliers to ship in smaller lots	p. 272
Surveying Other Quality Control Techniques	p. 273
Combining the Best of All Worlds in Total Quality Management	p. 275
Total Quality Management in a Nutshell	p. 276
The guiding principles	p. 276
The major steps	p. 277
The pros and cons	p. 279
Shedding Light on TQM Techniques and Tools	p. 279
Beginning with basic techniques	p. 280
Emphasizing the deletion of defects	p. 281
Taking prompt action on data	p. 282
Surveying the tools of TQM	p. 282
It Takes a Village: The Main TQM Players	p. 283
The role of executives	p. 283
The duties of middle managers	p. 284
The importance of empowered workers	p. 284
The value of external customers and suppliers	p. 286
Perpetual Motion: How to Enjoy Continuous Improvement	p. 286
Keeping TQM moving forward with the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle	p. 287
Watching small improvements add up	p. 287
Overcoming obstacles	p. 288
Fixing Tough Problems with Six Sigma	p. 289
Surveying the Basics of the Six Sigma Way	p. 290
Injecting statistics into tried-and-true methods: The foundation	p. 290
Driving for breakthrough results: The goal	p. 290
Meeting Six Sigma experts: The necessity	p. 291
Considering the pros and cons of Six Sigma: The dealbreakers	p. 292
Taking Important Steps to Implement Six Sigma	p. 293
Project selection: The key to success	p. 293
Proceed with caution: Doing upfront work before you implement Six Sigma	p. 295
DMAIC: A five-step program, Six Sigma style	p. 295
Crunching Some Six Sigma Numbers	p. 299
Calculating the Rolled Throughput Yield	p. 300
Understanding the meaning of "Sigma"	p. 301
Measuring variation with x's and Y's	p. 303
Putting Everything Together with Process-Review Tools	p. 304
Painting a complete picture with a SIPOC	p. 304
Organizing process inputs with Ishikawa's Fishbone	p. 305
Pinpointing potential process errors with FMEA	p. 307
Delving into Quality Function Deployment	p. 311
Organizing the Nuts 'n' Bolts of Quality Function Deployment	p. 311
The QFD matrix	p. 312
The pros and cons of QFD	p. 312
If You Build a House of Quality, Customers Will Come	p. 313
Identifying customer requirements	p. 314
Listening to the voice of the marketplace	p. 317
Converting customer requirements into design specifications	p. 317
Determining relationships between requirements and specifications	p. 319
Laying the roof	p. 320
Digging a basement	p. 321
Considering the Theory of Constraints	p. 325
Focusing on the Fundamentals of the Theory of Constraints	p. 325
Highlighting the principles behind the TOC	p. 326
Weighing the pros and cons of the TOC	p. 328
Understanding the Drum-Buffer-Rope System	p. 330
Marching to the beat of the drum	p. 330
Managing buffers for maximum results	p. 331
Feeding a constraint with the rope	p. 332
Tackling Constraints in Your Process	p. 333
Identifying a process constraint	p. 334
Cleaning up the constraint	p. 335
Subordinating processes to keep materials moving	p. 336
Elevating the constraint	p. 337
Improving throughput all over again	p. 338
The Part of Tens	p. 339
Ten Steps for Incorporating Quality into a New Product and/or Process	p. 341
Identify a Problem You Can Solve with a New Product or Service	p. 342
Define the Critical Characteristics of Each Customer Requirement	p. 342
Translate Customer Requirements into Measurements	p. 343
Establish a Capable Prototype Process	p. 343
Make Your Process Lean	p. 343
Mistake Proof Your Process	p. 344
Prepare the Kanban	p. 344
Test the Process	p. 345
Incorporate Improvements into the Process Design	p. 345
Create a Customer-Feedback Mechanism	p. 346
Ten (Or So) Web Sites with Quality Control Tips and Techniques	p. 347
International Organization for Standardization	p. 347
American Society for Quality	p. 348
Lean Aerospace Initiative	p. 348
Curious Cat Management Improvement Library	p. 348
The Northwest Lean Networks	p. 348
Kaizen Institute	p. 349
Replenishment Technology Group Inc.	p. 349
Total Quality Management	p. 349
i Six Sigma	p. 349
QFD Institute	p. 350
AGI	p. 350
Index	p. 351
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