Quality involves national or international standards and determines
where the product would be positioned in a market. There are various aspects
of quality that should be considered:
Design standards: This is usually defined by the way of specifications, national
and/or international standards, grades, drawings, etc.
Conformance: After a product has been designed, you may find that your manufacturing
processes do not always produce each unit in conformity to the required quality.
Therefore the quality of operation and the production must be continually checked
against original specification.
Marketability: Regardless of how well the product has been designed, specifications
prepared and placed in production, conformance to specification checked and
confirmed, and yet you may find that the product still does not meet with customer
satisfaction
Operational: he operational aspects of quality are minimum waste, scrap, repair
or rework, downtime, absenteeism and certainly minimum cost.
Economical: This relates to the optimum use of resources at your disposal.
Among these are materials, machines, money, land, energy and people.
Environmental : This includes such things as ecology, clean air, unpolluted
waters, tolerable noise levels, safe waste and the making use of recyclable
materials in your production and or packaging. Safety and suitable working
conditions, training, health care and ethical working standards for all staff
members.
To secure an acceptable level of sustainable quality continually, a company
must develop systems and procedures to:
develop quality standards
develop inspection methods
develop quality control procedures for each of the above