Quality Tools

Quality control is the activities and techniques employed to achieve and maintain the quality of a product, process, or service. It includes a monitoring activity, finding and eliminating causes of quality problems so that the requirements of the customer are continually met.

Seven Tools:

Histograms: A histogram is a tool for summarizing, analyzing, and displaying data. It provides the user with a graphical representation of the amount of variation found in a set of data. Histograms sort observations or data points, which are measurable data, into categories and describes the frequency of the data found in each category.

Flow Charts provide a visual illustration of the sequence of operations required to complete a task.

Scatter Diagrams:To identify correlations that might exist between a quality characteristic and a factor that might be driving it.

Pareto chart: The purpose of the Pareto chart is to prioritize problems - to decide what problems must be addressed.The Pareto concept was developed by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto describing the frequency distribution of any given characteristic of a population. Also called the 20-80 rule, he determined that a small percentage of any given group (20%) account for a high amount of a certain characteristic (80%). For instance in the BYU Law parking lot, there are basically 9 different colors of cars: white, blue, red, black, tan, silver, brown, yellow, and green. I decided to illustrate the Pareto principle by the different colors of cars. All colors are not created equally. Out of the nine different colors, three (red, blue, and white) make up about 64% of the cars. The same principle can be applied to all aspects of manufacturing. The Pareto chart is especially helpful in improving manufacturing processes

Cause-and-effect diagrams allow us to do not just that, but also can lead us to the root cause, or causes, of problems. It is a tool that enables the user to set down systematically a graphical representation of the trail that leads ultimately to the root cause of a quality concern or problem.

Check sheets allow the user to collect data from a process in an easy, systematic, and organized manner.

Statistical Process Control: To ensure that the process is in control and to monitor process variation on a continuous basis