Category: Engineering
10/22/2008
Joseph R. Haun

Quality can sometimes be a thankless profession.  The old adage “Don’t shoot the messenger.” oftentimes applies.  When you are in charge of quality, whether it is a small machine shop of ten assemblers or a multimillion dollar conglomerate, and someone makes a mistake, you ultimately made that mistake.  When things go badly, you must be the bearer of bad news; but when things run smoothly with no mistakes, management wonders why they need you. 

I began my career in chemistry as a pharmaceutical chemist.  It is not a concept that one ponders on a daily basis, but chemistry impacts and is intimately involved in every aspect of our lives.  From a basic element, to a two element molecule, finally forming a long chain hydrocarbon, everything in one’s daily life has chemistry undertones.  It could be that plastic bottle, that tree in your backyard, that metal bumper on your car, or the hair on your head; chemistry is all around us.  Everything in this world, living or otherwise, consists of a chemical molecular background.
 

I prefaced this discussion with chemistry because quality is the only other discipline that also impacts almost every aspect of our lives. Your shoes, your car, your cell phone, your dry cleaning, are all influenced by quality principles.   Quality means making things the way they are supposed to be made – bottom line.  Stringent specifications are written on how many products are to be manufactured whereby certain parameters are spelled out such as dimensional, functional, active ingredient percentage, or constituent ratio.  Others are not so obvious, but the quality notion is inherent. For example, for a painter using the wrong color, a delivery person delivering a newspaper on the wrong day, or a chef cooking a burger well-done when rare was requested there are unwritten intangible specifications, yet if not adhered to a “quality” problem will manifest itself. 
 

In a manufacturing environment, a quality department will exist and function whether it is one inspector in a small machine shop or a bureaucratic 1,000 person quality department in a multimillion dollar conglomerate.  But, not so obvious are the quasi-quality inspectors in other facets of life – the painter reading the estimate, the newspaper person checking the delivery schedule, the cook following the recipe – they are all quality inspectors in a less formal environment, but nonetheless ultimately responsible for the final product presented to their customer.  In a standard quality milieu, measurements are taken to see if the specification parameters are satisfied – dimensions with calipers, ingredient percentage with gas chromatography, metal crush resistance, microscopic bacteria counts – these are very concrete and discrete.  But, in other industries these measurements may not be so obvious. Virtually every place where quality exists some type of measurement vehicle exists even if it is via a satisfaction survey.
 

In future posts, I will discuss various quality tools and concepts, including measurements, and attempt to simplify and describe these in layman’s terms.  I welcome any feedback or experiences that may enhance this subject.