How Inspections Aid in Project Quality Control

Most companies receive complaints about their products or services at some time. Since this is a common event, you should learn more about how inspections can help you produce superior goods and provide better services.

Inspection forms the backbone of quality control. Without inspection, identification of problems is impossible. This can have severe ramifications for the client-producer relationship. All projects or processes can be inspected using subjective or objective criteria for weaknesses in conformance to standards. Remember, the role of inspection is to ensure results meet specifications.

Quality control is based on a plan and work results. The work results come from the mandated inspection process. Inspection activities consist of measuring, examining and testing to ensure conformance.

• Measuring - Most products or projects require acceptance inspection against specific physical requirements, such as dimensions. Processes often have ongoing measurements of critical criteria such as pressures. The goal is to ensure machines are calibrated properly.
• Examining - Most products or projects require examinations to determine acceptability to a set standard or criteria. This can involve measuring or examination of more subjective criteria, such as appearance.
• Testing - Inspection testing requires that the project or product be tested to ensure conformance. This can be done at the end, at different stages or as a continual activity. Testing is often necessary to check that a new technology, process or method will meet quality expectations.

In the production of a computer, various measurements, tests and examinations are made. Measurements are made on individual parts and subcomponents, such as the thickness of circuit board circuitry. Tests can then be run on these parts or subcomponents to ensure they work. Lastly, examinations can be made to ensure subcomponents and the final product were assembled correctly.
The quality management plan should indicate what control system is needed for inspection, measuring, or testing. The plan should give information on:

• what test equipment is to be used
• the method of test equipment calibration
• the method of recording test equipment calibration status
• the documentation of calibration information to determine when equipment is out of calibration

Inspections are not random affairs. The quality management plan helps determine when inspections should occur. Inspections occur at the moment at which it is most appropriate to ensure achievement of quality goals. This is a balance between just enough quality and the high cost of continuous inspection of all aspects of a project or a product.
Inspections after a single activity are the most rigorous of inspection processes. This method ensures each step in a process is compared to the desired goal. This is most often used in highly regulated industries that require tight tolerances, such as electronics.

Inspections at each stage ensure that a project or product is conforming to the specifications before more work is done. This prevents work being done on a flawed item, eliminating rework and waste. This is often seen in the construction and metal-working industries.

Most projects or products require a final inspection before shipment or acceptance by the customer or client. This ensures that all other inspections were successful. Some simplistic products or projects may not require inspection until completion.

The quality management plan is key to developing an effective inspection or testing regime. The plan needs to indicate relevant inspections or tests needed for a project to proceed to the next level, or be ready for client acceptance. The plan can give the following information regarding inspections and testing:

• how suppliers verify subcontractor products
• where each inspection/test is in the process
• what characteristics, criteria, and techniques are required
• where the client needs to verify the product
• where regulatory verification is necessary
• where third party testing, verification, validation, or certification is needed

During the production of a book, whether it be a novel or a textbook, various inspections and tests occur. The objective is to produce a written work that is free of factual and grammatical errors, formatted properly, illustrated correctly, logically laid out, and has a sense of coherent style.
After the author has written each chapter, style, logic, coherence, and general grammar and spelling are checked. After each chapter is submitted to the publisher, an editor checks for style, logic, coherence, and general grammar and spelling. Once the complete manuscript is finished, a variety of people look at it. The editor again examines for style, content and logic. A proofreader comments on grammar, punctuation and spelling.

After the content has been approved, the printing occurs. Author's proofs are then checked by the author, the editor, and copy proofreaders for any last minute errors in layout and formatting, including illustrations, before the final print run.

Inspections are also called "reviews," "product reviews," "audits" and "walk-throughs." It depends on the industry, the type of process or project and the purpose of the particular inspection. These terms can have quite narrow and specific meanings.

For example, an audit can mean different things. In a firm, an accounting audit inspects the books to ensure proper procedures and bookkeeping techniques were employed. A personal income tax audit accepts or rejects entries on your taxes based on income tax laws. A quality audit does not seek to inspect any product, but rather inspects the process of quality control to ensure the methods, measurements and people are being effectively used.

Inspection is a key component of the quality control process. Acceptance and rejection of poor quality work relies on inspections. Inspection results also provide the data used in statistical analysis methods.

Using Work Results for Project Quality Control

Have you ever had a quality plan, but wondered how the plan provided quality control information that could be used for analysis? The quality plan has reporting procedures and feedback that provide this information. This information is called work results. The two most common work results are performance reports and change requests. Each will be examined in turn.

Performance reports
Performance reports provide data that can be turned into various visual charts for analysis. Three of the most useful activities that performance reports measure are:

• schedule adherence
• cost adherence
• quality standards adherence.

In performance reporting, the simpler the visual projection of the data, the better. This makes it easier to understand the requirement for action. Four of the most common performance reports are: Gantt charts, S-Curves, histograms, and tables.
In histograms, data is shown as a vertical bar graph. This illustrates major problem categories. It forms the basis for control charts and Pareto diagrams.

Tables are often used to convey more complex data in its raw data form. Tables can convey observational data.

Performance reports can have a direct impact on quality management. Simple visual images can easily emphasize the need for immediate change. They can also indicate the project plan is working well.

A project manager for a microchip project submitted a weekly performance report after a difficult week. The visual report showed that most of the department's problems were coding errors. This indicated that changes were needed to prevent errors from reaching the final product. The project manager will have to look into this problem in more detail.

Change requests
Almost every process or project encounters some difficulty that requires a change in the conditions of the project such as time, cost, or quality objectives. Project managers may request additional time or money to ensure the project meets its original definition and expectations for quality.

Change requests, another form of work results, ask for the alteration to the project's objectives or quality. This can occur if the product is urgently required or additional expenses for quality will not result in increased profits or sales.

Change requests can also require alterations to quality methodology. Changes in the handling of data used to measure the project, the measurement process and techniques of data collection, or the evaluation of data, can be requested.

The handling of data may change in its method of collection, depth of detail, or type of data. For example, a company introducing new machinery may need to develop new measurements to reflect the change in machinery or technology.

Changes to the process or techniques of data collection are meant to ensure reliability, consistency, standardization, review, timeliness and rapid access to data. For example, a company may adopt an advanced database to aid inputting and calculations.

Change requests can also require new methods of analysis and improvements to the quality of data. For example, a manufacturing company using new equipment may want more precise data and more sophisticated analysis.

The value of the work results in the form of performance reports and change requests lies in their identification of a potential problem. The data these results provide points the way for more in-depth analytical treatment.

What Makes a Quality Management Plan Effective?

Have you ever had a problem that required implementing quality control methods, but you didn't know where to start? Proper project development requires a quality management plan to ensure that time and cost objectives and standards are met.

Depending on the needs of the project, a quality management plan can be formal or informal, detailed or broad. The best plans address the three aspects of quality—quality control, quality assurance, and quality improvement—and feature operational definitions as well as any procedures and standards.

Quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement
To provide direction and focus for project plan development, your plan should include details about quality control, quality assurance, and quality improvement measures.

• Quality Control - monitors products for conformance to the quality standards and identifies ways to eliminate substandard work or failures. It requires detailed instructions based on the operational definitions, or measurements, for the project.
• Quality Assurance - audits the organizational structures, responsibilities, procedures and processes of a project to ensure that the quality plan is providing effective feedback.
• Quality Improvement - is the outcome of the quality assurance and quality control processes. A design experiment may be required to determine if there are new operating norms or if the new procedures will work. It may prevent re-occurrences of quality issues.

Operational definitions
Next, your plan must define what needs to be measured. Before the plan can be fully developed, the following operational definitions need to be identified:

• What quality aspects will be measured?
• How will each quality aspect be measured?
• When will each quality aspect be measured?

Defining what needs to be measured can be the hardest part of the operational definition process. The governing rule should be to measure anything that can be variable in nature, whether the item to be measured is a human, a machine, a product, a procedure or process, or the environment.

Most final products require some sort of measurement to ensure conformance to subjective and objective standards. Subjective standards are difficult to measure. How exactly do you measure the aesthetic appeal of flowers? Objective standards require detailed measurements including destruction testing.

Forms can be developed to record objective and subjective measurements. Objective standards include strength, time, cost and measurement criteria. These need explicit data requiring detailed inspection processes and forms. Subjective standards, such as aesthetic standards, are most often measured using checklists with comment sections.

Determining how often to measure quality is another aspect of the operational definition process. Some of the most obvious times to test quality are:

• upon delivery of raw materials - This determines if the supplier is meeting your standards. Items should also be inspected after prolonged storage, especially if they are environmentally or corrosion sensitive. Not every item needs to be inspected. Sampling techniques can be used.
• at end of major stages in a process - It is often cost effective to inspect at the end of a sub- process to ensure substandard material does not progress further. This prevents wasted time, materials, and expensive rework procedures.
• upon changes in operating conditions - An appropriate time to measure is after changes to procedures, processes, machinery settings and human operators. This can take place at different intervals: every few minutes, hourly, each shift, weekly, monthly, or yearly. The time sensitivity of the process determines the frequency.
• upon completion of job lots - Many products are often produced in lots, partly as a function of the inputs process, but also as a function of testing and tracking of outputs. It is cheaper to throw out a small lot than an entire day's production run.

Ultimately, deciding when and how often to measure quality is a cost versus quality issue. Every item or stage of a project could be inspected, but the inspection costs may outweigh the final value.

Procedures and standards
The final component of a sound quality management plan involves procedures and checklists. Quality processes and standards should become routine and may be taught and enforced through procedures in the form of checklists.

Checklists confirm whether quality control standards have been followed. They can be instructive by outlining what needs to be done by saying, "Do Y." Process checklists also ensure certain tasks have been done by asking, "Has X been completed?" In some processes or projects, inspection checklists can gather data on the number of times tasks have or have not been performed adequately.

Checklists ensure that process steps are not overlooked or forgotten. They also ensure that the product does not advance to the next process before necessary tasks are done. This prevents costly rework if changes are required.

In some cases, companies perform work to certain external standards as expressed in governmental or association regulations or guidelines. If this is the case with your project, you can develop checklists which include standards.

Project quality is only as good as the quality management plan. To ensure project quality, the plan must be well thought out and rehearsed. Project quality can be ensured by a complete understanding of: quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement; operational definitions; and checklists and standards.