- ISBN: 9780470069097 | 0470069090
- Cover: Paperback
- Copyright: 3/27/2012
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!
Larry Webber is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt and holds a Masters of Project Management degree from West Carolina University. He has supported quality initiatives at multiple major manufacturers and in software development companies. He’s currently a Project Manager and Six Sigma Black Belt working for Computer Science Corporation. Larry is also retired from the Army Reserve as an infantry First Sergeant, is a certified Master Business Continuity Planner and a certified Project Manager, and holds an MBA and BSBA from Rockhurst College. He can be reached at ljwljw88@hotmail.com.
Michael Wallace has more than 25 years of experience in the information systems field. He graduated magna cum laude from Wright State University with a bachelor of science degree in Management Science. Michael has worked as an application developer, a systems analyst, and a technical and business consultant and has assisted the state of Ohio in developing statewide IT policies. He’s active in the local technical community, is President of the Columbus International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners (IAMCP), is a Competent Toastmaster with Toastmasters International, and graduated from the Executive MBA program at the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University. Michael is now the Vice President of Application Engineering at Result Data, which provides its clients with guidance on IT strategy, application development, business intelligence, disaster-recovery planning, and policies and procedures. He’s also an adjunct faculty member at The Ohio State University and at DeVry University’s Keller Graduate School of Management, and he has published several articles and books on business and technology topics. He can be reached at michaelw@columbus.rr.com.
| 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 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
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