Question

Please explain what is statistical approach to “Built-in Quality” in consumer product. The idea has to include process capability, process control, DOE, partial DOE and Taguchi Method. It is important to provide some real application examples.

Answer 1

Built-In Quality Management of Continuous Improvement

The Toyota Production System (TPS) house diagram is often drawn with a triangular roof, a rectangular foundation, and two rectangular columns between the foundation and roof. The space between the columns is filled with one’s choice of the systems, tools, and principles to suit the lean enterprise application. There is some variation on what goes into the foundation, but few disagree that kaizen, standardized work, and heijunka belong there. The columns are just-in-time and built-in quality (aka jidoka).

A company that has started a journey with lean manufacturing understands that an effective lean manufacturing system focuses on adding value to products and services, identifying and reducing waste, and improved support for workers across the organization.   A key element of any manufacturing organization’s strategy is to also achieve exceptional levels of product quality. A well-implemented and managed Lean Manufacturing (LM) system will help to achieve this goal.

A critical principle to achieving high-quality products and services is to: not accept; build; or ship a defect. But how do organizations achieve this objective even in a LM environment? Is there still a reliance on multiple layers of inspection and detection and containment of defects? Or is the focus on having effective process controls in place and having them followed?

The most efficient and effective way to guarantee high-quality performance is through the use of a concept called Built-In-Quality (BIQ). BIQ is one of the five principles of Lean Manufacturing. The other four principles are:

• Employee Engagement
• Standardization
• Short Lead time
• Continuous Improvement

BIQ, integrated with the other four principles of lean manufacturing, defines the steps required for building quality into the manufacturing process. BIQ allows an organization to move from the detection and containment of defects to preventing defects from ever being produced. By migrating through each step of the BIQ process, an organization is able to increase its ability to build quality in station and lower the overall cost of quality by reducing the need for inspection and correction.

With the application of BIQ concepts, the manufacturing organization takes an ever-increasing responsibility for achieving quality results through each step of the BIQ process. In addition, to achieve increased levels of BIQ performance, greater engagement is required from other functions within a company such as product engineering, manufacturing engineering and purchasing. The responsibility for BIQ becomes ‘enterprise-wide’.   Built-In-Quality ensures that everyone in the organization is engaged to achieve its quality and customer satisfaction goals.