Quality control should be practiced every single day that a company is open for business. Without quality control, the business is almost guaranteed to fail. The quality of your product or service is why your customers keep coming back.
Prevention is the key! Company culture is very important, if everyone is involved at every point in the process. Mistakes or defects in the final product can be avoided. So everyone is equally important, everyone is on the same page for the same goal, which is to get the best possible product at its highest quality out to the customer.
Important Tools in Total Quality Management (TQM)
Fishbone Diagram: This is a Cause and Effect diagram. It is a great way to visually see where the problem is originating, and will help to identity the root cause and sort them out into specific categories along with solutions.
Histogram: This tool merely lets you know the frequency that certain data is happening in a bar graph form. This works with the process that you are trying to improve. This is a great statistical tool.
Process Flow Charts: As you can see (no pun), visualizing is the trick when quality control is the goal. The process must flow effortlessly and the end result must have a high standard of quality. Defects are the enemy, so do not let them into your camp — be on the lookout. Process flow charts do exactly what it says — lets you visualize the entire process by looking at the chart.
An easy way to start a flowchart would be by using post-it notes, and with your team walk through the entire process and at each step, stop and write down the activity, in the exact order that it is done. You can post them on a large board after you are finished and review. This will make the process come to life as you are reading them, and identify opportunities for improvements.
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