Managing Quality, 6th Edition

Chapter Nine Quality Management Tools

B. G. Dale, B. Dehe and D. Bamford

Introduction

To support, develop and advance a process of continuous improvement it is necessary for an organization to use a selection of tools and techniques. Some of these tools and techniques are simple, while others are more complex. There are a considerable number of tools and techniques; the following are perhaps the most popular and best known:

• Checklists
• Flowcharts
• The seven quality control tools (QC7: cause-and-effect diagram, check sheet, control chart, graphs, histogram, Pareto diagram and scatter diagram)
• Quality costing
• Statistical process control
• Failure mode and effects analysis
• Fault tree analysis
• Design of experiments
• Quality function deployment
• The seven management tools (M7: affinity diagrams, relations diagrams, systematic diagrams, matrix diagrams, matrix data analysis, process decision programme chart, and arrow diagrams)
• Departmental purpose analysis
• Mistake-proofing
• Benchmarking
• Total productive maintenance
• Housekeeping and 5s

Tools and techniques have different roles to play in continuous improvement and if applied correctly give repeatable and reliable results (Bamford and Greatbanks 2005). Their roles include:

• Summarizing data and organizing its presentation
• Data-collection and structuring ideas
• Identifying relationships
• Discovering and understanding a problem
• Implementing actions
• Finding and removing the causes of the problem
• Selecting problems for improvement and assisting ...