Top 7 Mistakes in Quality Control Planning and How to Avoid Them?

Control plan is a vital component of quality management since it is applied to achieve and maintain quality performance. It is applied for documenting the best practices and current standards of the process or the product, communicating quality expectations and requirements to the team and stakeholders, managing and controlling variation in the process or product and their performance, and enhancing customers’ satisfaction and loyalty.

What is Quality Control Planning?

A control plan is a comprehensive document that outlines the necessary information and actions required to maintain and enhance the quality of a process or product. It details the inputs, outputs, characteristics, specifications, measurement methods, tools, resources, responsibilities, and frequencies associated with each step of the process or product. By establishing a quality control plan, a process or product becomes repeatable, reliable, and compliant with customer requirements. Additionally, it aids in identifying and preventing potential issues, flaws, or failures while implementing corrective and preventive measures.

A control plan is established after design and qualification of the product or process, but not yet shipped or implemented. For a control plan to be established, you need to have a definition of scope and objectives, a definition of key input and output variables and attributes, a definition of specifications and tolerances, the selection of suitable methods and tools for measuring and controlling each variable or attribute, and assigned responsibilities and roles.

What is Quality Control VS Quality Assurance?

Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) are two terms that are often used interchangeably. Although similar, there are distinct differences between the two concepts.  

Quality control is meeting the requirements, expectations, and needs of the customer, free from defects, lacks, and substantial variations. There are standards that need to be followed to satisfy the customer’s requirements. Quality assurance involves the protocols and procedures that track various aspects of a service or facility systematically. Quality assurance activities identify and fix issues or differences that fall beyond existing norms or specifications through audits and other types of evaluation.

Quality Control (QC) and Quality Assurance (QA) are used interchangeably. Even though the two terms are synonymous, there are slight differences between them two terms.

Quality control is meeting customer needs, requirements, and demands without defects, and of value. There are standards to be followed to meet customer needs. Quality assurance includes the laws and disciplines that regulate much of a facility or a service systematically. Quality assurance activity identifies and resolves issues or variances outside existing norms or specifications by means of audit and other types of evaluation.

What are the Top Mistakes You Should Avoid in Your Organization?

Top 7 Mistakes in Quality Control Planning-

A control plan is a critical component of quality management as it facilitates the attainment and maintenance of quality performance. It is utilized to document the best practice and standards currently available for the process or product, communicate the quality needs and expectations to the team and stakeholders, manage and regulate the process or product variation and performance, detect and correct any deviation or nonconformity with the specifications, review and optimize the process or product efficiency and effectiveness, reduce waste, rework, and cost, and enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.

1. Overlooking Exhaustive Training Procedures- One of the main quality control mistakes is the insufficient training of employees. Inadequate training on standards and protocols can generate oversights and inconsistencies.  

2. Ignoring Good Documentation Practices- Failure to maintain precise and updated documentation is a serious flaw. Inadequate or poor documentation can stall the process of product journey tracking, and it becomes challenging to identify flaws or rectify errors efficiently. It is essential to follow strict documentation practices for quality control to flow smoothly.

3. Absence of Quantifiable Quality Metrics- Failure to define clear and measurable quality metrics impedes the process of measuring success. When there are no specific parameters, measuring the quality of a product becomes subjective and thereby varies with inconsistencies in judgment. Having specific quality metrics is crucial for improvement and consistency.

4. Overlooking Routine Equipment Maintenance- Overlooking routine equipment and tool maintenance is a common but detrimental error. Neglected or inefficient equipment may introduce defects into the production process, impacting quality. Regular equipment maintenance must be performed to prevent such issues.

5. Inadequate Risk Assessment- Failure to conduct effective risk assessments may contribute to unforeseen quality issues. It is important to determine potential risks in the supply chain and manufacturing process in order to pre-empt potential problems before they impact product quality.

6. Ignoring Customer Feedback- Ignoring customer feedback results in a disconnect between perceived quality and customer expectations. Customer feedback is extremely valuable in altering and improving quality standards. Actively adopting and implementing feedback is crucial for continuous improvement.

7. Inadequate Communication Among Teams- Ineffective communication among different departments can lead to errors and misunderstandings. Encouraging open lines of communication and establishing a team-oriented atmosphere is very important in sustaining an integrated quality control approach.

How to Implement Quality Control?

To use the control plan effectively, you must first train everyone involved—including team members, managers, and other stakeholders—on why it matters. Next, you implement the plan according to the established procedures and guidelines. After that, you systematically gather and log data from measurements and controls. If you find any, you initiate corrective and preventive actions, assess whether those actions worked, document the lessons learned, and share the outcomes and feedback with the entire team and the stakeholders.  

The control plan can deliver multiple advantages to your quality management initiative: enhanced quality and reliability, reduced variation and defects, increased efficiency and productivity, savings in time and costs, heightened customer satisfaction and loyalty, better team communication and collaboration, and smoother pathways for ongoing improvement and innovation in the process or the product. All of these outcomes stem from minimizing waste and rework, clarifying roles and responsibilities, and fulfilling customer expectations and requirements.

What are the Quality Assurance Techniques?

Quality Assurance is important in product development and manufacturing. Some of them are listed below, so you can choose which one among them is best for your company.

• Total quality management is one approach to quality assurance that entails developing an organization-wide culture of quality management. This implies that all the departments and staff related to the activities affecting quality management, for example, supply chain management or stock management, are trained to assure quality levels and strive for continuous improvement.

• Failure testing is a simple quality control method that exposes products to extreme stressful conditions, such as temperature, pressure or tension, until the product breaks. In the process, product weaknesses are identified. Additionally, data is gathered in the process so that quality control measures can be taken for product improvement.

• Process and Product Quality Assurance (PPQA)- It is a quality assurance technique which focuses on developing quality standards and procedures at an organizational level to assess, measure and solve quality management issues. It is a process that is founded on a thorough gap analysis of the different business processes linked to quality assurance.

Conclusion

Quality planning is an ongoing process. The quality plan will need to be revised and updated during the project to ensure that it is working effectively. Individuals tend to create a plan, and it’s as if it’s carved in stone, whereas it should be more of a dry-erase board. Quality planning is required because not addressing quality makes it more difficult to execute a successful project. The project manager defines the criteria to be met to qualify the project as successful before any type of execution within the firm.

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