List of QA (Quality Assurance) Tools and Techniques

S

shushd

Hi all,

I've been asked to list all QA respobsibilities and tools or technics to achive them such as (FMEA, SPC, Control charts and so on). I'm not familier with all of them, and I could use some help here. If anyone has such a list I would appriciete it.:rolleyes:

Thank so much
 
S

shushd

Thanks you two for your replies. Generally I know all that, what I don't know is when to use it. I'm trying to build up a list of processes in my company, from the time raw materials are coming in, the design phase, prototype, production and try and list the quality methods/methodology/tools we need to use in each of the quality management system stages.
We are very new at this, and wer'e building everything from start. We don't really have a QA manager, and wer'e learning alot as we go along and thanks to this great forum. So, forgive me if it sounds a bit stupid. I hope I managed to clear my self a little bit.
 
D

DsqrdDGD909

It may help us to be more detailed in our responses if you had a process flow for your company that you could share.
 

Wes Bucey

Prophet of Profit
Thanks you two for your replies. Generally I know all that, what I don't know is when to use it. I'm trying to build up a list of processes in my company, from the time raw materials are coming in, the design phase, prototype, production and try and list the quality methods/methodology/tools we need to use in each of the quality management system stages.
We are very new at this, and wer'e building everything from start. We don't really have a QA manager, and wer'e learning alot as we go along and thanks to this great forum. So, forgive me if it sounds a bit stupid. I hope I managed to clear my self a little bit.
I note from your Profile you declare yourself a "technical writer." I value the work of technical writers in writing clear concise descriptions of existing processes, but I question the value of technical writers being assigned to create the processes from scratch without a strong background in using the tools of the process.

We often see threads started by folks who have been burdened with following a third party quality manual written in generic form by an experienced quality professional, only to find there are procedures and processes included in the manual which are useless and impractical in the thread starter's organization.

One of the most egregious examples I witnessed was a small 5 person organization which had copied the entire Quality Manual and Procedure set from a multi-national corporation with 100,000 employees. Since every employee wore several hats in the small organization, they had the extreme example of the President, who was also the chief engineer and purchasing agent, signing off on new documentation in three places, once for each job title! After I ran a one day seminar for all five employees, they ultimately discarded 90% of their Procedures and reduced the Quality Manual from 250 pages to 30 pages, compliant with ISO 9001:2000. They were able to do the paring of the Procedures and Manual themselves without further input from "experts," (especially not me!)

My bottom line advice:
Sit down with all the folks in your organization and settle these points:
  1. Can they agree on what the flow of operations are (will be)? This means they can draw a flow chart which lists the order of events in bringing a product or service from initial idea to delivery to the customer.
  2. Can they agree on who (which individual currently employed) is capable of performing each task in the flow chart and that the person will accept the responsibility and be granted the authority by the others to do so?
When they have agreed on those points, then it might be worthwhile to call in a qualified consultant to help your organization perform a gap analysis comparing the barebones operation with a Business/Quality Management System Standard such as ISO9001:2000 to see where some of the Quality tools might be employed.

That said, some of the tools may be "once and done" or used continually. Take FMEA (Failure Mode & Effects Analysis) - some companies are single product companies and FMEA may only come into play once or twice during the lifetime of the product (during its initial planning and when revisions are made.) Other companies (job shops, contract manufacturers, multi-product companies, etc.) may find FMEA taking up a large amount of time and effort on a daily or weekly basis.

Similarly, SPC (Statistical Process Control) is important for organizations making hundreds, thousands, or millions of identical products, but rarely important for organizations making "one-off" customized products where every customer gets a different product in which most components are purchased from third parties and the organization's primary business is assembling a unique product from standard off-the-shelf third party components.

The point is to fit the tools to the operation, not fit the operation to the tools by imposing nonessential tools.
 
S

shushd

:thanx: Yes, Wes, you are absolutely right!! We are a small company that makes dozens of very similar products, based on the same idea, but are customized per customer. A lot of our work here is R&D and we're still struggling to stabilize the process.
We are required however, (not from all of our customers) to have control plans, FMEA, process map and so on.
Because I come from a very big pharmaceutical company working as head of documentation department there, I do have a lot of experience as far as documentation goes. I did draw up nice flow charts for almost every process we have here, created and implemented controlled manufacturing procedures and forms for the production floor people, so we are at least documenting part of our processes in production and I urged the management here to bring in a consultant, but unfortunately they are reluctant at this point. So, I am trying (don't know if I succeed) to keep going without one, and trying to learn more about the side of QA I'm not familiar with. It is very hard, I must say, but it's better than nothing. That is why I like this forum so much it helps me a lot. But for example, I know we need FMEA, but I don't really know, where to start. I hope my reply is not too long, and if it is I apologize. :confused:
 
W

wessamsheta2000

Hi all,
I am sorry if you think this question kind of silly, but I need the picture to be more clear to me
Is the List of QA (Quality Assurance) Tools and Techniques is the same like we can say Quality Assurance Plan

and if it not what Quality assurance plan means
and how can we make QA plan procedure
 
Y

Yew Jin

I have one good Quality Progress - Advanced Quality Planning to share to you all. Totally there are 5 phases in APQP -

1. Plan and define the program
2. Product design and development
3. Process design and development
4. Product and process validation
5. Feedback, assessment and corrective action

Enjoy your reading.......:biglaugh:
 

Attachments

  • Advance Product Quality Planning.pdf
    81.3 KB · Views: 2,887

Wes Bucey

Prophet of Profit
To shushd:
There are folks who may groan over long answers, but since I am notorious for long answers, I could NEVER complain.

It sounds as if you are on the right track. Certainly, there are some things your organization does which could benefit from some Lean thinking and mistakeproofing to eliminate false steps up blind alleys and make them as efficient as possible.

One of our posters graciously provided a copy of a long article on the "Toyota way." (http://elsmar.com/Forums/showpost.php?p=174297&postcount=38)

You'll notice they do things well without bothering with any of the nonsense alphabet soup of acronyms like FMEA, PPAP, SPC, etc. The culture as Toyota does it here in the States is laudable. One of my colleagues is a long time quality expert in Tokyo. He reports the Toyota HQ personnel sometimes get involved in changing things just to change them without thinking through ALL the ramifications of the change. This results in "efficiencies" which do not improve the product and which do not return the cost of the change. Some folks "think" they have adopted a Lean culture similar to Toyota, but they run around like the proverbial decapitated barnyard fowl trying to implement "kaizen" and end up spending more time on trying to implement kaizen than in producing products to pay the bills.

Given the description of your business, you will gain a market advantage by having an upfront FMEA program showing customers and prospects (whether they request it or not) how you think through the design and production process to eliminate problems (and cost) before beginning production. The more streamlined and efficient you can make that FMEA and any PPAP (production part approval process), the more confidence you will give the prospects and customers in doing business with you.

A Control Plan for production is an outgrowth of the FMEA process where the organization implements actions and in-process inspections to prevent the possibilities for "failure" which arose during the FMEA. The whole point is to convey to the customers that your planning and process are so good and efficient you PREVENT nonconformance before, instead of DETECT nonconformance after money, time, effort, and materials have been spent to make scrap.
 
Top Bottom