Markasmith said:
There should in reality (my opinion) be no need for a quality department except for the potential exception of statistical evaluation because some do not have the brain power.
Mark
In point of fact, I have seen several operations (including one of my own) where the Quality "department" was primarily a knowledge base and overseer of the measuring instruments and Standards. The folks in the Quality Department trained and evaluated capability of operators who performed and recorded their own in-process inspections. First Article Inspections were essentially "redundant" events. The operator who made First Article would do all the measurements of characteristics according to a Control Plan previously designed and agreed to with operator, Quality department, design engineer, and customer. When done, he would find another operator to do a redundant inspection with his own (the other operator's) instruments. If there was a discrepancy between readings not accountable with "normal variation," then, and only then, would Quality department perform a third FAI. The check sheet with the results of the two operators' readings went to customer along with tagged sample. If everyone was happy with readings, production continued.
The good part - every operator had more pride in finished product and picked up important skills in measuring, SPC, customer-interaction. Customers were encouraged to ask questions directly of operators, who gave direct and honest answers. Quality department folk were considered partners and mentors instead of police.
The bad part - a much smaller Quality department.
Evolution of the concept - operators asked for and got direct read instruments which were wired into computers to eliminate hand entry of readings. Operators asked for and got bar code scanners to deal with travelers with each order. As production equipment became more and more computerized, operators asked for and got manufacturing cells which gave each operator more control over a larger part of each product. As operators became used to working with manufacturing cells, they asked for and received training in design of experiments so they could optimize their production. As all these things evolved, operator turnover dropped from 60% per year to less than 10%. Dollar production per man hour doubled in two years and doubled again in the next two years.
MRB (Material Review Board) was multi-discipline and operators were empowered to call a meeting of MRB any time to clarify suspect material whether incoming, in-process, or outgoing. They acted like owners and customers simultaneously!
We created a special conference room with chalkboards, screens, TV and VCRs, and PowerPoint projectors just for the operators to use as a meeting, training, and interview room. MRB members came from all over the plant to meet in their conference room.
Operators went to trade shows and machine tool showroom demonstrations. They interviewed and cross-examined tooling representatives about new materials and shapes. They demanded and got samples to use in their DOE. Finding a willing and knowledgeable audience, the tooling salesmen came with new ideas and innovations. One such collaboration resulted in a new production design of an existing component which had been traditionally made in three operations on different machines now dropped off complete from one machine, raising the Cpk from 1.3 to 2.5 - all done by a collaboration of operators and tooling salesmen.
Best part - without any emphasis on the part of management, production department had a remarkable increase in cleanliness.
If I had my druthers:
I'd like to see the inspection business disappear from the Quality department, but elevate the inspectors to trainers and ensure EVERY organization had a department of Quality trainers to train the entire organization.
