Measurement for Quality Control

 Measurement is the act of collecting data to quantify the values of product,

service, process, and other business metrics.
 Measures and indicators refer to the numerical results obtained from
measurement.
 The term indicator is often used for measurements that are not a
direct or exclusive measure of performance.
 Good measures should be SMART: Simple, Measurable, Actionable,
Related (to customer and operational requirements), and Timely.
Dashboards
 … summaries of key performance measures, typically consisting of a small
set of measures (five or six) that provide a quick summary of process
performance.
 Dashboards often use graphs, charts, and other visual aids to communicate
key measures and alert workers and managers when performance is not
where it should be.
Common Quality Measurements
 A unit of work is the output of a process or an individual process step.
 A nonconformance is any defect or error associated with a unit of work.
 In manufacturing we often use the term defect, and in service
applications, we generally use the term error to describe a
nonconformance.
 A nonconforming unit of work is one that has one or more defects or
errors.
Types of Quality Control Measures
 An attribute measurement characterizes the presence or absence of
nonconformances in a unit of work, or the number of nonconformances in
a unit of work.
 Attribute measurements often are collected by visual inspection and
expressed as proportions and counts.
 Variable measurements apply to dimensional quantities such as length,
weight, and time, or any value on a continuous scale of measurement.
 Variable measurements are generally expressed with statistical
measures such as averages and standard deviations.
Defect Classification
1. Critical defect: A critical defect is one that judgment and experience
indicate will surely result in hazardous or unsafe conditions for individuals
 using, maintaining, or depending on the product and will prevent proper
performance of the product.
2. Major defect: A major defect is one not critical but likely to result in failure
or to materially reduce the usability of the unit for its intended purpose.
3. Minor defect: A minor defect is one not likely to materially reduce the
usability of the item for its intended purpose, nor to have any bearing on
the effective use or operation of the unit.
DPMO
 Defects per million opportunities (DPMO)
= (Number of defects discovered)/(opportunities for error) × 1,000,000
 In services, the term often used as an analogy to dpmo is errors per million
opportunities (epmo).
Cost of Quality Measures
 Cost of Quality (COQ) – the cost of avoiding poor quality, or costs incurred
as a result of poor quality
 Provides a basis for identifying improvement opportunities and success of
improvement programs
 COQ translates quality problems into the “language” of upper management
—the language of money.
Quality Cost Classification
 Prevention
 Investments made to keep nonconforming products from occurring
and reaching the customer
 Appraisal
 Associated with efforts to ensure conformance to requirements,
generally through measurement and analysis of data to detect
nonconformances
 Internal failure
 Costs of unsatisfactory quality found before the delivery of a product
to the customer
 External failure
 Costs incurred after poor-quality products reach the customer
Errors in Manual Inspection
 Complexity: The number of defects caught by an inspector decreases with
more parts and less orderly arrangement.
 Defect rate: When the product defect rate is low, inspectors tend to miss
more defects than when the defect rate is higher.
  Inspection rate: The inspector’s performance degrades rapidly as the
inspection rate increases
Metrology
 …the science of measurement and is defined broadly as the collection of
people, equipment, facilities, methods, and procedures used to assure the
correctness or adequacy of measurements.
Accuracy and Precision
 Accuracy is defined as the difference between the true value and the
observed average of a measurement.
 Accuracy is measured as the amount of error in a measurement in
proportion to the total size of the measurement.
 Precision is defined as the closeness of repeated measurements to each
other.
 Precision relates to the variance of repeated measurements.
Repeatability and Reproducibility Analysis
 Repeatability (equipment variation, EV) – variation in multiple
measurements by an individual using the same instrument.
 Reproducibility (appraiser variation, AV) - variation in the same measuring
instrument used by different individuals.
 A repeatability and reproducibility (R&R) study is a study of variation in a
measurement system using statistical analysis.
Types of Process Capability Studies
• Process characterization study - how a process performs under actual
operating conditions
• Peak performance study - how a process performs under ideal conditions
• Component variability study - relative contribution of different sources of
variation (e.g., process factors, measurement system)
Statistical Process Control (SPC)
 … a methodology for monitoring a process to identify special causes of
variation and signal the need to take corrective action when appropriate.
 Control chart - a run chart to which two horizontal lines, called control
limits are added: the upper control limit (UCL) and lower control limit (LCL)
Typical Out-of-Control Patterns
 Point outside control limits
 Sudden shift in process average
 Cycles
 Trends
  Hugging the center line
 Hugging the control limits

Breakthrough
 …the accomplishment of any improvement that takes an organization to
unprecedented levels of performance.
 Breakthrough attacks chronic losses or, in Deming’s terminology, common
causes of variation.
 Process improvement methodologies and tools provide the foundation for
breakthrough as well as modern Six Sigma approaches.

 Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycle is used to identify and implement
improvements.
 PDSA is also used throughout the school district in operational and support
areas
Process Improvement Methodologies
 Redefining and analyzing the problem: Collect and organize information,
analyze the data and underlying assumptions, and reexamine the problem
for new perspectives, with the goal of achieving a workable problem
definition.
  Generating ideas: “Brainstorm” to develop potential solutions.
 Evaluating and selecting ideas: Determine whether the ideas have merit
and will achieve the problem solver’s goal.
 Implementing ideas: Sell the solution and gain acceptance by those who
must use them.
Evolution of the Deming Cycle
 Walter Shewhart: specification, production, and inspection for mass
production.
 These steps correspond to the scientific method of hypothesizing,
carrying out an experiment, and testing the hypothesis.
 “Deming Wheel”
1. Design the product with appropriate tests.
2. Make the product and test in the production line and in the laboratory.
3. Sell the product.
4. Test the product in service and through market research.
 Japanese Implementation: Plan-Do-Check-Act