Time to walk-the-walk...

... Quality is defined, not divined. It must be measurable or assessable and based on the important, albeit imperfect, user, market, regulatory, technical and reproduction qualities of the product. Quality can be defined in terms understandable and usable by product developers and designers. The methodology described herein is a simple construct that can ensure that Quality is knowable, measurable, achievable and maintainable at the product development level. It's also very important to understand that management proclamation, industrial Quality standards, piles of corporate Quality manuals, marketing literature and engineering specifications do not ensure that Quality will exist in products; talk-the-talk wont do it! The most important proposition for implementing Quality is that the product team, designers and engineers must take personal responsibility at the design level to implement a verifiable Quality program. Walk-the-walk by realizing that no one else can, should or will undertake the responsibility to achieve a high quality product.

References

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¹ ISO 9000 Pocket Guide, Hoyle, David; Butterworth-Heineman, 1998

² DC Montgomery, Design and Analysis of Experiments, 4th ed. (New York: Wiley, 1997), 413.

³ See article: "On… Good Product Engineering Practices" [Note, this is a real 'sit-down' read.]



The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author only and do not represent the views of the Techman/Kanata or of any of its directors, officers or employees. The author, Mr. Richard (Dick) Haney, can be reached at RichardMHaney@cs.com