About two or three times a month, a client tells us about serious issues they have experienced with a certain product, and they ask if we can help fix those product quality issues. In some cases, it is relatively quick and easy. In others, it may involve deep changes, including a re-design of the product itself! … [Read more...]
Planning for Quality & Compliance at the Product Design Stage: 3 Topics You MUST Focus On
A reader asked what he should pay attention to when he starts to work on a new product in order to avoid a very large “dumb tax” in the future. This is a good question, as there are many activities to undertake that will help your product be compliant and have quality and reliability that reaches or exceeds your and your customers' expectations once it has been produced. I recently wrote about the typical NPI process we follow with clients and its many constituent activities in this post: … [Read more...]
Basics of Supplier Quality Management: A Good Training & Book
From time to time, I skim through a book or training that covers a topic to see if there is a new angle that we might benefit from. This time, I picked the training entitled Seven Essentials in Supplier Quality Management by Evelyn Tan, who has 30 years of experience in consumer electronics, food, and aerospace products. She worked at Dell for 17 years as a supplier quality manager, and for other companies such as Honeywell. She has a lot of hands-on experience. Obviously, a lot of what we … [Read more...]
What Are Quality Standards? [Podcast]
![What Are Quality Standards? [Podcast]](https://qualityinspection.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/WhatAreQualityStandardsPodcast-1140x445.jpeg)
In this episode… Renaud explores what quality standards are here. There is a combination of physical samples and written resources that outline and clarify your product quality expectations to your manufacturer and quality inspectors. There are different levels, from most basic to advanced...you'll see how, together, they keep everyone aligned and reduce quality risks from early in your cooperation with a supplier. Just hit the play button to start listening..! Listen to the … [Read more...]
Nonconforming Products or Materials: What Are the Options?
I wrote extensively about quality inspections, the way the AQL limits lead to a pass/fail result, how to set up corrective actions in order to prevent the same issues from coming back, how to set up a QC plan to prevent issues and detect them as early as possible, and so on and so forth. One thing I haven't covered is the breadth of options available when nonconforming products or materials (in other words, products that are not up to your standard) are found. … [Read more...]
Product Quality and Reliability Issues: Typical Classification
What are typical product quality and reliability issues, when do they occur in the product's lifecycle, and who might be responsible for them? … [Read more...]
Supplier Quality Management: KPIs and Improvement Tools
If you purchase goods from outside companies, and if you need to ensure that your products are of high quality, reliability, and safety, you need to focus on supplier quality management. This takes different forms for different companies, of course. Let's take two examples: Companies like Apple spend a lot of resources to qualify the right manufacturers, to ensure new products are developed with a low risk of issues, to monitor productions, etc. In contrast, a buyer of gift & … [Read more...]
Quality and Compliance of Imported Products
To run a successful business, you want to make and distribute products that are at the right quality standard and that comply with the regulations of the countries of sale. I guess nobody will argue with that. But what do "Quality and Compliance" mean, in practice? They are often separated under different functions inside the same company. Why? Let's look at these 2 concepts in the context of manufacturing products and importing them. … [Read more...]
Your Cost of Poor Quality Is Higher Than You Think
When one studies the literature around the Cost of Quality, the traditional breakdown of the costs is presented as follows: Source: ASQ TR2:2018. ISO 10014 and ASQ TR 2, two standards that provide guidelines (in other words, advice, rather than a set of requirements like ISO 9001), follow this logic. The problem is, it leaves a lot of extra costs unaccounted for. What makes up the cost of poor quality, in the traditional view? If something cannot be … [Read more...]
A Few Tips To Avoid Quality Fade in China
When Paul Midler wrote ‘Quality Fade’: China’s Great Business Challenge in 2007, I remember it struck a nerve and that article was widely quoted. And, nearly 14 years later, the term 'quality fade' is rather well known among importers. As Midler described it: One of the problems facing China is that manufacturers continue to engage in a practice I call “quality fade.” This is the deliberate and secret habit of widening profit margins through a reduction in the quality of materials. Importers … [Read more...]