QA is absolutely necessary for companies and organizations to take very seriously. Everyone expects some baseline of quality, even in low-cost products. There is no more luxury of allowing poor quality products or services to hit the market. The intense competition will take advantage of the weakness and quickly fill the gap with better products. Many talk a good quality line, but are unable to implement a culture of quality such as Toyota and Hyundai have done. GM has talked about quality for 30+ years but have not caught up to their rivals and based on their current troubles are unlikely to bridge the quality gap. Also, once a company has a reputation for weak quality it is very difficult to overcome that perception.
The text mentions QA departments within an organization whose sole purpose is to check and test for quality, but I think truly that the quality responsibility must be placed into the hands of each and every employee in the organization. Everyone must be able to address quality problems at the source and not wait until the issues make their way to the QA team. Quality must be everyone's responsibility and not just shifted to a QA department.
Should there even be a QA department is a question that was posed during my Operations class over the summer. The argument was that a QA team effectively absolves the other employees of the quality responsibility by shifting the QA analysis and decisions to the QA department. Not that there shouldn't be benchmarking, quality audits, or statistical analysis done by a specific team, but ultimately the responsibility for the overall quality must be at the highest priority for the management all the way down to the line staff. Only this way will the culture of the organization be truly quality focused in practice and not just in slogans.
River 1000
8 years ago
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1 comment:
You make some great points.
You mention Hyundai as a company that promotes Quality. They have come a long way since the 80s. I remember a friend of mine had one in the 80s and that vehicle was horrible. Many misfitted interior parts. Today, I drive a Hyundai and I'm proud to do so. Excellent Quality.
With regards to abolishing Quality Departments and instead make everyone responsible for Quality I believe the Quality Department should not be abolished. Instead the QA department should be responsible for teaching the Quality "skills" and tools to employess so they can be responsible for Quality.
As a Quality Director / Manager / Consultant, my job was to work my self out of a job. The whole idea was to continuous improve the company's quality so the QA department was not needed. That Goal was never met as Quality is also a continuous moving target.
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