Part 2 book "Industrial engineering foundations bridging the gap between engineering and management" includes content: Statistical quality control, facility location, system reliability, queueing theory, application of principles. | Chapter STATISTICAL QUALITY 7 CONTROL INTRODUCTION The importance of quality cannot be underestimated. The least impact resulting from a low-quality product is probably only economical and this by itself can severely impair the financial health of any enterprise. In the worst case inferior quality can lead to irreversible consequences such as loss of life which can inflict severe financial damages and endanger the existence of the enterprise. A credible enterprise must aim to produce goods and services of the right quantity and value and also of the right quality. It is important to know the difference between inspection and quality control. Inspection is used to verify the quality of what has already been produced whereas quality control is a process that is used to foresee direct and control the quality of the products yet to be produced. When an item or product fails to meet expectations or perform its intended function then it is associated with inferior or unacceptable quality. Technically by quality we mean to what degree a measured value of a feature deviates from its stated specifications. The smaller the deviation the better the quality. To gauge quality the general public and consumers rely on a company s reputation for quality and reliability and the brand name as they lack any systematic tools to measure quality. The volume of the business natural desire for profits and sometimes the regulations in place justify encourage and force organizations to resort to more scientific and consistent methods of assessment to produce goods of acceptable quality and constantly look for ways of improvement. Statistical quality control SQC is an approach that can cost-effectively help any organization to achieve these. We will show that it is not necessary for SQC to screen each and every one of the product items or components. Proven sampling techniques allow only a small part of the output to be examined yet provide significant insight into the quality and .
