Happy’s Essential Skills: The Need for Total Quality Control (Six Sigma and Statistical Tools): Part 1

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

1. Management Commitment

Top management has to drive any system as large or as complex as TQC. Until management makes that commitment, a bottoms-up approach of sending engineers or workers to SPC or quality classes will not take root. My experience with this started when our group VP introduced TQC to his staff. He gave each of them a personal project and then had each of them train their staff after which they gave out individual projects. This 4 Episodes of TQC was labeled LUTI for Learn, Use, Teach, Individualize, and so forth, down through the structure until it got to the individual supervisor and worker.

Figure 2: TQC Improvement Circle consisting of plan-do-check-act.

2. Process Improvement

The TQC Improvement Circle or PDCA steps are used in a continuous manner to assess the current situation, propose and implement solutions, test effectiveness of the solution, and standardize the process on those solutions that are found effective (Figure 2). Data is used to prioritize the improvements on which to work.

• Plan (drive, direct)
• Do (deploy, support, participate)
• Check (review)
• Act (recognize, communicate, revise)

3. Employee Empowerment
• Training
• Suggestion scheme
• Measurement and recognition
• Excellence teams

4. Fact-Based Decision Making
• SPC (statistical process control)
• DOE, FMEA
• The 6 statistical tools
• TOPS (Ford 8D—team-oriented problem solving)

Continuous Improvement
• Systematic measurement and focus on CONQ
• Excellence teams
• Cross-functional process management
• Attain, maintain, improve standards

Customer Focus
• Supplier partnership
• Service relationship with internal customers
• Never compromise quality
• Customer-driven standards

The Concept of Continuous Improvement by TQC
TQC is mainly concerned with continuous improvement in all work, from high-level strategic planning and decision-making, to detailed execution of work on the shop floor. It stems from the belief that mistakes can be avoided and defects can be prevented. It leads to continuously improving results, in all aspects of work, because of continuously improving capabilities, people, processes, technology and machine capabilities.

Continuous improvement must deal not only with improving results, but more importantly with improving capabilities to produce better results in the future. The five major areas of focus for capability improvement are demand generation, supply generation, technology, operations and people capability.

Figure 3: TQC central principles and what it is NOT.

A central principle of TQC (voiced by Dr. Deming) is that people may make mistakes, but most of them are caused, or at least permitted, by faulty systems and processes. This means that the root cause of such mistakes can be identified and eliminated, and repetition can be prevented by changing the process[3]. There are three major mechanisms of prevention:

1. Preventing mistakes (defects) from occurring (mistake-proofing or poka-yoke).
2. Where mistakes cannot be absolutely prevented, detecting them early to prevent them from being passed down the value-added chain (inspection at source or by the next operation).
3. Where mistakes recur, stopping production until the process can be corrected, to prevent the production of more defects (stop in time).Page 2 of 4

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