Quality magazine focuses on quality technology, including measurement and gaging equipment. This has been the historic focus of the quality profession, but it is important to recognize that quality—conformance to the customer’s requirements and fitness for the customer’s purpose—is merely the price of admission to the marketplace. Rapid and reliable delivery, and especially low prices, are what win market share. They are achieved by removing all forms of waste, of which poor quality is but one, from the supply chain.
Poor quality is only one of the Toyota Production System’s Seven Wastes, and it is rarely the most costly one. This is because, first of all, poor quality is usually expressed in fractions of a percentage. The other wastes are generally built into the job and are present 100 percent of the time. They are also usually asymptomatic, i.e. they do nothing to announce their presence. Defects and nonconformances, on the other hand, stand up and proclaim, “Here we are, come and find our root causes,” which any good corrective and preventive action (CAPA) process will do. I recommend the Automotive Industry Action Group’s CQI-20, Effective Problem Solving, as the best in existence for this purpose.