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Unit 6: Quality Assurance and Control

to detect and correct errors, among other measures. TQM involves the participation of every Notes
department, every section, every activity, continuous improvement effort. Its central integrative
focus is the concept of total customer satisfaction with the quality and performance of the
company’s products or service.
The structure of TQM may be seen to consist of the following main elements:
1. Design Standardisation
2. Taguchi Methods (Control of Variability)
3. Quality Function Deployment
4. Performance Measurement and Statistical Quality Control

5. Employee Involvement
6. Small-Group Activities
The nature of each of these elements may be outlined briefly:
1. Design standardisation denotes that the design of components and their assembly in a
product has been rationalised, tested rigorously and proven in manufacture. It is a powerful
means for improving the flow of new products through the product and process design
function. It also has major implications for simplifying the factory floor environment and
the entire product service task in the field. A proven standard design serves to eliminate
various ‘bugs’ from the production process. It makes possible the optimisation of the
production process and its error-free operation.
2. Taguchi methods provide a powerful means for isolating critical product design parameters
that need to be controlled in the manufacturing process. They also enable manufacturing
management to relate the variability in their products to monetary losses. Taguchi’s
quality loss function enables management to think of quality in terms of money rather
than merely in terms of the implications of various statistical distributions, standard
deviations, variability and so on. The importance of Taguchi methods lies in their
demonstration of how the cost of variability. The cost of quality to the company and to
society can be calculated through Taguchi’s quality loss function.

Example: The function, enables a company to evaluate the significance of a 50 per cent
reduction in product variability in terms of monetary gains. The company can then analyse
whether the methods by which it can achieve that 50 per cent reduction in variability are worth
the reduced quality monetary losses.
3. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) represents a comprehensive analytic schema or
framework for quality. The purpose of this schema is to enable a company to translate any
customer preference or desire about products into what has to be done in design,
manufacturing or distribution and to the product and the process, to satisfy the customer.
Quality function deployment provides structure to the product development cycle. The
foundation of this structure is customer requirements. QFD proceeds in a systematic manner
from design concepts to manufacturing process to manufactured product. It ensures at
each step that quality assurance is built into both process and product. QFD also implies
that the company has documented its quality policy that is understood, implemented and
maintained at all levels in the organisation and that responsibility and authority are
clearly defined.
4. Performance measurement and statistical quality control are applicable to both the factory
of the enterprise and its vendors or suppliers. The latter are enjoined upon and expected to
supply materials, components and inputs of required standards and specifications of quality.

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