Why process quality improvement is important?

Module II. Process Quality Improvement

Lecture -1 Why process quality improvement is important?

From operations management perspective, a process is any activity or group of activities that takes one or more inputs, transforms them, and provides one or more outputs for its customers (internal or external). The key to success in an organization is to understand how their processes work to deliver the required outputs. Any process should add value and unnecessary waste activities should be eliminated from the process steps, as per definition in Lean Management philosophy. In the context of Quality Management philosophy, process is transformation of inputs into output, which satisfies the required Quality Characteristics defined by the customers. These characteristics are called ‘CTQ’s’ (Critical-to-Quality) or ‘responses’. The transformation happens by controlling few vitals critical input and process variables (x1 ...xp) known as controllable variables. These variables actually influence the mean and variance of the CTQ. Thus proper setting of these variables is critical to get the best or optimal output.

However, there are other variables (z1…zm) which cannot be controlled, say room temperature, humidity, or uneconomical to control. The variation caused in CTQ by these variables is assumed to be the natural variability or chance cause variability. Taguchi emphasized to minimize CTQ variability even in presence of these uncontrollable or noise variables by using orthogonal array design based DOE.

Determining the best setting for controllable variables is the primary focus of process quality improvement activity. If process improves, we will get the best output or responses and as a consequence best desired quality product for the end customer. Every company focuses on process quality improvement so as to improve their prime competitive priority (or Quality).