Quality, what is Quality? and what does it mean? It's a form of measurement that is used to measure against other things of a similar kind, a degree of excellence of something better, greater or higher: it takes anywhere from 6-10 years to be great at something; hence serving an apprenticeship for 6 years. As individuals, we take on different attributes towards our chosen professions, an integral mindset towards values varies from person to person regarding their skill setts time and effort that is applied. (practice makes perfect). As consumers, we seek out the best quality we can, either in a product or people, not all graduates of their respective professions or trades are quality driven in their approach to delivering their very best every minute of every day.
And this is where the problem is rooted, once we see that degree hanging on our wall and we have finished our apprenticeship and received our tradesman statues for most where we stop learning to strive forwards in personnel achievements towards self-improvements.
(1) Define the quality characteristics of the product or service.
(2) Decide how to measure each quality characteristics.
(3) Set quality standards for each quality characteristics.
(4) Control quality against those standards.
(5) Find and correct the causes of poor quality.
(6) Continue to make improvements.
In a perfect world without time and money restraints producing quality items and service is undoubtedly and unquestionably attainable; but, for the most part, this is not reality.
In the automotive industry, time is money; time is measured by the 100th of a second and every second is approximately $100. In perspective when the assembly line stops for a minute $6,000 is lost one hour $360,000 eight hours $2,880,000 forty hours $115,200,000: when time is lost there is no recovery, and this is why there is so much pressure applied to the assembly line to maintain line speed; line speed takes priority over everything, yes even at the expense of quality. I was told when I worked at Ford Motor Company in Oakville "the line stops only if there is a body on it".
Engineers, artistic vehicle designers, architects of schematics, clay sculptures who take a rendering and create a life realism that represents a finished product for approval is all well and good only when the top brass from their ivory towers asks the question "how much will this cost"? Then money restraints play importance in producing the quality vehicle. The corvette is known for its performance, so most of the budget is directed towards that portion of engineering, the body in earlier models and trim were of substandard quality to meet money requirements. A Bugatti Veyron is unquestionably a high-quality vehicle and one would expect nothing less for a price tag of $1.7m -$3m The Ferrari line up of vehicles also have a quality name attached as a price tag of $215k -$625k When time and money don't play an integral part in production then quality is expected. Or is it?
To produce anything of quality comes from the individual (s) who are making or installing those precise items. Quality is a mindset that plays an important roll in producing quality. Supervisors functions take on many forms of leadership to motivate assembly line workers for motivations towards building quality from each individual; these attributes can only be achieved by carefully recognising each operators strengths and weaknesses to achieve in all integrity and value to reach the heights of quality that each worker has and is capable of producing.
Safety and quality should have equal billing on the assembly line, each operator is responsible for safety and quality, all are responsible for producing a first run vehicle of quality. If something is not right STOP THE LINE and fix it.
