Theory Behind Production Assurance
There is an adversarial relationship between Quality and Production organizations in many industries. This stems from the following beliefs which are inherent in classical quality theory:
- Quality and Production organizations should be structured in parallel fashion.
- Quality and Production organizations should report independently to the same management level.
- There is an inherent conflict between quality and schedule.
Modern quality theory requires continual improvement. A quality program that is organized along traditional lines can only provide constant improvement up to a point, because of the beliefs listed above.
Santa Clara Plating Co., Inc’s award winning quality program has been in place for nearly two decades. When our quality program progress reached a point of diminishing improvement, the Production and Quality Assurance functions were reorganized into the current Production Assurance organization structure where Production, Quality, Process Control and Waste treatment functions are consolidated under the same manager. With this form of organization, each operator is made personally responsible for the quality of his or her work, and the same manager is responsible for both quality and schedule. Our employees and management personnel periodically review quality performance data. This innovation provides consistent compliance with company quality standards, customer requirements, and international standards of quality performance, and wins excellence awards and recognition from our customers.
Old quality-think suggests that you can inspect quality into the product. More modern quality-think says you must push the defects back upstream and PREVENT them rather than simply DETECTING them. That’s what our QEs, first article procedure, bimonthly training program, and all our testing is all about… PREVENTING problems!