SPONSORED FEATURE
What Is Your True Cost of Quality?
“It costs just as much to make a defect as it does to make a quality product first time” – Dr Edwards Deming
W
hen I ask this question of many manufacturers today, I fi nd it surprising just how many don’t
know and how few attempt to calculate their Cost of Quality, or to determine root cause of problems. Frequently, the cost of scrap, rework, etc., gets buried within the company overhead, especially if the problem is found and ‘sorted’ before despatch, before it becomes a batch rejection or product recall.
Scapegoats for a Loss of £250,000 I experienced precisely this problem not long ago with a well-known pharmaceutical manufacturer who, due to a batch rejection, had to dump £250,000 of product to landfi ll as half the batch had been printed with an incorrect date code. The real sadness is that this would have been an easy problem to prevent and, at least, to prevent a recurrence, but the company response was ‘We have solved the problem, as we have sacked the person responsible’. It would have been far better to have said to the person responsible for the failure, ‘I have just invested £250,000 in your education, so what do you suggest we do to ensure this never happens again?’ Even today it is easier to take drastic action to appease instant anger and frustration, even to sack somebody, than to determine root cause and put controls in place to
22 May 2022 | Automation
stop a recurrence and even to put ‘the errant culprit’ in charge of the new ‘fool proof solution’. Sadly, that is not what happened. We soon lost contact with the company after this episode as we felt that we could not ‘add true value’ where people were being made scapegoats for genuine mistakes. A simple integrated or semi-automated solution which, on product changeovers, automatically sets up the date coders would have completely avoided this problem and the consequential huge cost, whilst minimising, if not eliminating the risk of it ever happening again. But such is the perpetual problem when quality or engineering issues are found, unless a true ‘root cause’ is determined and fi xed permanently, the problem will be destined to recur.
No QC/QA, No Problems? This reminds me of an edible oil packer who, during their radical QC/QA change, decided to get rid of their 9 Quality Control Inspectors. “Don’t need them anymore”, said the CEO proudly, “Got rid of them 9 months ago and haven’t had a quality problem ever since”. “So what have you put in their place?” I naively asked. “Nothing! Which proves we didn’t need them anyway” he continued. At this point I politely ended the meeting as this was not going to end well
for us nor, sadly, for his company in the future. On my way to my next client, I couldn’t get this guy’s comments out of my mind and really felt concerned for his next 9 months or more of trading. I couldn’t help thinking ‘Well, I guess that you only fi nd what you look for and, if you don’t look, then you don’t fi nd’. Whilst this case was unusual it was by no means unique. What, it seems some people forget, if they ever saw the quality department as anything other than an expensive luxury in the fi rst place, is that the quality department is there to protect the business and the brand, as the fi nal quality arbiter is the customer, the end user or the supermarket or both. Some customers complain, but past research has shown that only about one in ten complain, the rest just don’t return to buy more product.
The Cost of Quality – Control the Process, Not the Product But what does this have to do with ‘The Cost of Quality?’ you may well ask. These are a couple of ‘Cost of Quality’ examples. ‘Cost of Quality’ has nothing to do with the cost of running the Quality Assurance department, a necessary requirement of any well-run business. When ineff ectual inspection-based Quality Control gave way to process based Quality Assurance, some decades ago, it was seen as a ‘Game
automationmagazine.co.uk
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