Photovoltaic Module Reliability

6Using Quality Management Systems to Manufacture PV Modules

The first five chapters of this book have presented the efforts involved in testing and evaluating the performance of PV modules. However, you cannot test quality into a product. Testing can only indicate whether a manufacturer has been successful at designing and building quality into the product in the first place. In order to continuously build quality modules, the manufacturers should be using Quality Management Systems that have been developed specifically for PV‐module manufacturing.

This chapter will relate some of the history behind how Quality Management Systems evolved in PV, indicating how successful this has been as well as identifying some of the issues with the present system and the need for further improvements.

6.1 Quality Management Systems

A quality management system (QMS) is a collection of business processes and practices designed to continuously improve the quality of the products being produced to ensure that customer expectations and requirements are met or exceeded. A quality management system (QMS) is usually implemented as a framework of organizational structures, methods, procedures, techniques, policies, processes, and resource allocations established to provide the necessary control over all aspects of the company's operation. A QMS details the methods by which responsibilities and relationships are defined, ensures meeting schedules, and details how contracts and agreements are implemented. ...