What is the real cost of poor product quality and reliability and what can be done to lower your risks and costs? You'll learn why the phrase “Pay Me Now, or Pay Me Later" is particularly relevant because the costs of good quality and reliability (while requiring a decent-sized investment for sure) are surely lower than the cost of poor quality and reliability and reputational damage that it causes to your business. Prefer listening to reading? Just hit play below: 🎧 Cost … [Read more...]
The Concept of Quality: Little q VS Big Q.
Take a deep dive into the concept of quality. A lot of importers focus narrowly on if the products they're getting from their manufacturers/suppliers are within tolerance (little q). But without a wider view that looks at the entire manufacturing process from design to production (Big Q), can the mistakes that lead to each batch containing defective pieces be found and fixed, or do we end up in a cycle of inspecting finished batches, removing 'bad' pieces, and then reworking them or scrapping … [Read more...]
Quality Checklists: 3 Examples for Inspections
Over the years, we have provided feedback to many clients on their product specification sheets and their quality checklists for inspections. Rather than a step-by-step guideline, the most useful is usually to provide them with a few real examples for different types of products. 3 examples of quality inspection checklists In 2020, when personal protective equipment was severely lacking in many countries, we released some of our templates on our commercial … [Read more...]
Fixing Product Quality Issues: MFG vs. Product Design Causes
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...]