How to Utilize Quality Management Tools to Collect & Present Data
Customers seek a quality product for a reasonable price. To fulfill the customer's request, companies invest in quality control programs to constantly improve their portfolio of products and services. Quality management tools are used by companies to ensure that a product or service performs consistently as promised. Learn how to use quality management tools to collect and present data.
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Instructions
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Decide the quality goal to pursue. Remember to select a quality goal that is important to the customer. For example, a quality goal that is important to a repair customer is that the item is fixed right the first time.
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Create a flow chart to get a visual representation of the process from beginning to end. Document each activity, decision point and output of the process. Using the repair example, some steps would be take customer call, enter repair request, create work ticket, dispatch repairman, call to verify repair, close work ticket.
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At each step of the process, document the time it takes to complete the step. Calculate each step and decision point to get the complete cycle time of the process. For the repairs, some steps may take 20 seconds while others take 30 minutes.
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Create a cause/effect (fishbone) diagram to document the causes of the process problems. The cause/effect diagram for the repair example may contain causes such as: incorrect problem diagnosis, needed part not available or customer not home.
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Use check sheets to record data about the problem observed, how often it is observed and the number of total observations performed. The "incorrect problem" diagnosis for the repairs may be observed seven times out of 200 service calls.
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Create a pareto chart to understand the 20 percent of the causes that lead to 80 percent of the problem. The pareto chart shows the frequency of the causes of a problem. 20 percent of the reason for not repairing the item the first time could be parts unavailability.
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Adjust the process as necessary to eliminate the majority of the reasons for the problem. A process improvement for the unavailability of parts would be to place spare parts on the repair truck.
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Create statistical process control (SPC) charts to monitor the process for variability. If there are trends showing that the process is outside the normal statistical limits of operation, reevaluate the process.
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Tips & Warnings
Programs such as Six Sigma provide a step-by-step methodology for process improvement.
Do not rush through the process and take time to learn how to properly use the quality management tools.
