Chapter 5

An Overview of Quality Tools

Total Quality Tools Defined
 In a total-quality setting, new products
are designed with full participation of
manufacturing, materials and quality
specialists throughout the design phase in
a process known as concurrent
engineering.
 This ensures that when the design is
turned over to manufacturing, it will be
producible and the manufacturing
department will be ready for it.
 Beyond the manufacturing process, a
process of continuous improvement will
assure that the product not only meets its
customer's expectations but also
improves for as long as production is
continued.
 For this to happen, all the people involved
in the process, from design through
production, must employ a few simple
statistical tools.
 The seven tools discussed in the
following seven sections represent
those generally accepted as the
basic total-quality tools.
The Pareto Chart
 The Pareto chart is the first basic total-quality tool. This
chart is named after the Italian economist/sociologist
Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923).
 The Pareto chart can assist people to allocate their
resources efficiently since it will reveal the most
significant area.
 You can cascade Pareto charts by determining the most
significant category in the first chart, then making a
second chart related only to that category, and
repeating this as far as possible. If the cascading is
done properly, root causes of problems may be
determined rather easily.
 The Pareto chart was developed to illustrate the
80-20 Rule — that 80 percent of the problems stem
from 20 percent of the causes.
Example of The Pareto Chart's
Application
 Typically on the left vertical axis is frequency of
occurrence, but it can alternatively represent cost
or other important unit of measure.
 The right vertical axis is the cumulative
percentage of the total number of occurrences,
total cost, or total of the particular unit of
measure.
 The purpose is to highlight the most important
among a (typically large) set of factors.
 The Pareto chart often represents the most
common sources of defects, the highest occurring
type of defect, or the most frequent reasons for
customer complaints, etc.
The Fishbone Diagram
 The Fishbone Diagram is the second total-quality
tool.
 It is also called as cause and effect diagram and
the Ishikawa Diagram. It was developed by the
late Dr Kaoru Ishikawa.
 This diagram is the only quality-tool that is not
based on statistics.
 It visualizes how the various factors associated
with a process affect the process's output.
 Furthermore, it provides a graphic view of the
entire process that is easily interpreted by the
brain.
 Causes in a cause & effect diagram are
frequently arranged into four major
categories. While these categories can be
anything, you will often see:
 Manpower, methods, materials, and
machinery (recommended for
manufacturing)
 Equipment, policies, procedures, and
people (recommended for administration
and service).
The Check Sheet
 The check sheet is the third of the seven quality-
tools.
 The check sheet is important when organizations
have a problem to access important data.
 It can be a valuable tool in a wide variety of
applications since it can take any form.
 It can be in the form of drawing or anything else
as long as the data collection must be the
equivalent of entering a check mark and the
displayed data are easily translated into useful
information.
 To set up the check up sheet, you have to
think about your objective.
 Then, you set up the check sheet as a
histogram providing all the information
needed.
 This is called a Process Distribution Check
Sheet.
 Other commonly used check sheets are
Defective Item Check Sheets, Defect
Location Check Sheets and Defect Factor
Check Sheets.
Example of a Check Sheet
Histograms
 Histograms are always associated
with two kinds of data that are
attributes and variables data.
 An attribute is something that the
output product of the process has or
does not have.
 On the other hand, variables data
are something that results from
measurement.
 Histograms can have different shapes and
positions relative to specification limits
set.
 Histograms may represent normal
distributions or skewed distributions (to
the left or right).
 Skewed distributions would indicate that
processes are not centered and products
do not meet the specifications.
Scatter Diagrams
 The Scatter Diagram is the fifth quality-
tool. It is the simplest and the most
useful tool. It is used to determine the
correlation (relationship) between two
characteristics (variables). The two
characteristics are plotted on the x-axis
and y-axis.
 Scatter diagrams are useful in testing the
correlation between process factors and
characteristics of product flowing out of
the process.
Run Charts
 The run chart is a straightforward
chart. It records the output results
of a process over time since one
axis (usually x-axis) represents
time. For this reason, this chart is
also known as a trend chart.
Control Charts
 The control chart is a much more
sophisticated outgrowth compared
to the run chart since it will show
the variation factors that can also
affect the production.
 Variation factors are essential in
order to evaluate problems and find
solutions.
Control Chart
Variation Factors
 There are two causes included in these factors.
The first one is the special causes - things like
changes in the materials used, machine problems,
lack of employee training.
 The other one is the common causes that are
purely random. Whenever a special cause (non-
statistical cause) impacts the process, one of two
things will happen:
 i) a plot point will penetrate Upper Control Limit
(UCL) or Lower Control Limit (LCL), or
 ii) there will be a "run of several points in a row
above or below the average line
 When a penetration or a lengthy run appears, this
is the control chart's signal that something is
wrong that requires immediate attention.
 As long as the plots stay between the limits and
don't congregate on one side or the other of the
process average line, the process is in statistical
control.
 If either of these conditions is not met, then we
can say that the process is not in statistical
control, or simply, is "out of control."
Stratifications
 Stratification is the seventh total-quality tool. It
involves investigating the cause of a problem by
grouping data into categories. This grouping is
called stratification. The groups might include
data relative to the environment, the people
involved and so on.
 Stratification allows you to arrive at a root cause
of the problem if you stratify far enough.
 This situation will enable the problem to be solved
when the root causes are corrected.