Assurance Technologies Principles and Practices (A Product, Process, and System Safety Perspective) || Quality Assurance Engineering and Preventing Latent Safety Defects

✍ Scribed by Raheja, Dev G.; Allocco, Michael

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 604 KB
• Edition: 2
• Category: Article
• ISBN: 0471744913
• DOI: 10.1002/047000942x.ch6

✦ Synopsis

Most life-cycle costs are locked in by the design philosophy, and quality is no exception. Like reliability, it is built into a product. On the other hand, this does not mean that process control in manufacturing is unimportant. Process control is of the utmost importance to prevent premature failures, which can create catastrophic hazards such as loose fasteners and improper assembly in many automotive recalls.

Quality is conformance to a set of requirements that, if met, results in a product that is fit for its intended use [1]. It is a broad term applied to customer satisfaction. It includes quality of design, quality of processes, quality of services such as on-time product delivery, and the value perceived by the customer. (The "customer" can also be the production operators and managers in the downstream departments.) Since the goal is customer satisfaction (internal as well as external customers), the overall focus should be on customer needs.

Traditionally, companies have aimed at reducing scrap and rework costs rather than satisfying customer needs. Apropos of this philosophy, Dr. W. Edward Deming once said: "Working hard will not help you if you don't do the right things." One of the wrong things done by quality professionals is not conducting any hazard analysis on the manufacturing process. We are referring to the errors in the process that can lead to accidents in the field. Typical hazards are the wrong torque on fasteners, assembling the wrong components, using defective components, and forgetting to assemble a component such as a lockwasher. Of course, 199