Advanced product quality planning – why is it so important?
Quality in the automotive industry has always been of essential significance and therefore, it is an important competitiveness factor, even more important than the price or timeliness of deliveries. With regard to the above, the planning of the quality of the products and the process takes place at the earliest stage possible. As a result, one can avoid additional costs connected with the modifications of the process in order to improve the quality in the serial production and one is able to prevent nonconformities from occurring without having to remove their consequences. The cost of erasing the potential problem rises ten times in each consequent phase of the project.
Product quality should be planned at all stages, namely, starting from requests for quotation, overview of the contract, purchases, the machine park, production of semi-manufactured goods, ready products, research, control and measurement equipment and its verification, storage until the shipping of ready products.
The result of such proceedings is that one ensures the enterprise’s capability of completing new products and providing flawless services in a definite time and fitting the assumed budget. Therefore, quality planning is the point of departure for the entire quality management system, which precedes the monitoring and improvement stage.
One could provide numerous definitions of quality planning. For instance, according to V. Feigenbaum, quality-planning process itself is the “process of progressive thinking concerned with the sequence of the actions taken in order to accomplish the planned intentions which allow for the achievement of specific goals”. On the other hand, Munro defines the quality planning process as the “identification of the actions which are necessary for the achievement of quality objectives”. However, the experts agree in one aspect and namely – setting the goals which have to be given as much priority as organizational or financial goals.
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