What are the key metrics and indicators of quality performance and cost effectiveness?

I’ve found more often than not, companies want to skimp on the prevention of issues including planning and training, and put more of their time in failure analysis. In my experience, the cost of quality would be lowered if more time was spent finding the actual best solution to start instead of the quickest or cheapest one that comes with too many compromises. Those compromises often lead to issues which really just cost more money down the line when things get tight!

The cost of quality (COQ) represents the total expenses an organization incurs due to poor quality or non-conformance of products or services, encompassing both prevention costs, such as quality planning and training, and failure costs, including rework and customer complaints. Often, companies focus more on failure analysis rather than investing in prevention, which can lead to higher costs in the long run. Prioritizing effective solutions from the outset, instead of opting for the quickest or cheapest ones, can significantly reduce overall quality-related expenses.

Key quality performance indicators can include metrics such as defect rate, customer satisfaction, response time and process efficiency.

As principais métricas de qualidade incluem a taxa de defeitos, índices de conformidade e satisfa??o do cliente. Indicadores de desempenho englobam eficiência operacional, tempo de ciclo e produtividade. Já os de custo-benefício focam no custo da qualidade, como custo de preven??o e falhas, retorno sobre o investimento em qualidade (ROI) e custo por unidade produzida, balanceando a rela??o entre qualidade e economia.

Quality yield (QY) measures the percentage of products or services that meet customer specifications, calculated as the ratio of good units to total units produced or delivered. It helps assess the effectiveness of quality control processes, benchmark performance against industry standards, and identify areas for improvement.

NTFT (Not Right First Time) is a crucial metric that often gets overlooked. In some companies, scraps and non-conformities are reworked and reintroduced into the production line. By focusing solely on defects, we miss capturing the full cost, production slowdowns, and increased risk to the final product caused by reworks. Rework Examples: If a tube leaks, it is welded. If a tape is missing, it is reapplied. If a vision system triggers false alarms, the product is manually checked and reinserted into the line—this too qualifies as a rework.

It does well to remember that for every one consumer who complains there are ten who do not. They complain but tote. Friends who then each tell ten others and so on. Each complaint should be treated seriously and sufficient attention given to it. Particularly consumers do not like to receive producer propaganda in answer to complaint (eg. At xyz company we do our utmost to assure bla bla). They want assurance that their complaint has received proper attention, what that constituted and what the result was.

Often quality indicators report about non quality such as defects, scrap, complaints etc but they do not report about the quality delivered. Process capability is the only quality indicator giving information about quality delivered and provides an indication of the risk that defects are delivered which are not found during inspection. There are a few things to consider setting up a good reporting mechanism using process capability: 1. You need enough data 2. Data should be in control otherwise results can not really be used to predict quality 3. Have you identified all critical product and process characteristics In case the answer to 3 is negative machine learning can assist finding the relationships

In my experience, this tool works very well for production departments. Personnel can see how their contributions affect the overall business goals. Especially if broken down into each day. However, this is not a useful tool for support departments. For example, having a goal for how many parts are inspected by the QC team won’t mean anything, as the personnel contribute nothing to the goal and cannot influence it’s success.

I think one of the most important levels of quality is a quality mindset from everybody at your company. You just have to train that and change the research mindset most people would have. Another thing I’ve seen quality decisions based on ignorance. It is important to always have a justification and support for our decisions and to review and verify other people’s processes. The worst is when someone put the company in trouble, but didn’t know how to do it better, and nobody reviewed the decision, or trusted their judgment and didn’t not challenged the decision made. Quality by design is an input approach, not a single decision approach.

I found that getting the employees of the company to understand and buy into the idea of producing a quality product can be more helpful than trying to force the idea on them. Allowing them to have input can help produce more and better products when they feel that are a part of the process. Looking for better processes and safer ways adds to the quality of the product.

Fix it before it's a problem. On my last job, i was the Quality Control supervisor for the whole plant. I took an extra step when needed and offered suggestions to production either at start or during production to bring down the scrap rate. My reasoning behind that was the more correctly parts are made, the faster and smoother they made it through inspection, hence saving time in the long run. Bottom line, pay close attention to the beginning, and the end result will be good.