Total Quality Control
Total Quality Control
Total Quality Control defined as an effective system for intergrating the quality development, quality maintainance and quality improvement efforts of the various groups in an organisation so as to enable production and service at the most economical level which allow for full customer satisfaction.
It may be classified as a ‘‘Management Tool’’ for many industries outstanding improvement in product quality design and reduction in operating costs and losses.
Product quality is defined as ‘‘The composite product of engineering and manufacture that determine the degree to which the product in use will meet the expectations of the customer’’.
‘‘Control’’ represents a tool with four steps :
- Setting up of quality standards.
- Appraising conformance to these standards
- Acting when these standards are exceeded.
- Planning for improvements in these standards.
Quality control emerges as a based function based on the collection analysis and interpretations of data on all aspects of the enterprise.
Total quality control is an aid for good engineering designs, good manufacturing methods and conscious inspection activity that have always been required for the production of high quality articles.
Quality of any product is effected at many stages of the industrial cycle :
- Marketing : Evaluates the level of Quality which customers want for which they arewilling to pay.
- Engineering : Reduces this marketing evaluations to exact specification.
- Purchasing : Chooses, contracts with and retains vendors for parts and materials.
- Manufacturing Engineering : Select the jigs, tools and processes for production.
- Manufacturing Supervision and shop operators : Exert a major quality influence duringparts making, sub assembly and final assembly.
- Mechanical Inspection and function Test : Check conformance to specifications.
- Shipping : Influences the calibre of packaging and transportation.
- Installation : Helps ensure proper operations by installing the product according toproper instructions and maintaining it through product service.
In other words, the determination of both quality and quality costs actually takes place throughout the entire industrial cycle.
Quality control is responsible for quality assurance at optimum quality costs. The benefits resulting from Total Quality Control programmes are :
- Improvements in product quality and design
- Reduction in operating costs and losses
- Reduction in production line bottle necks
- Improvement in employee morale
- Improved inspection methods
- Setting time standards for labour
- Definite schedule for preventive maintainance
- Availability of purposeful data for use in co-advertising
- Furnishing of actual basis for cost accounting for standard and for scrap, reworkand inspection.