Share | How can “quality issues” stop being the responsibility of just the quality department?

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Everyone in the quality field has one common enemy: \"quality issues.\" Whether it’s customer complaints, rework, scrapped products, or defective items, people tend to refer to these situations as \"quality issues.\" When there are too many such issues in a company, managers blame the quality department, especially in small and medium-sized domestic enterprises. As a quality professional, it’s really frustrating and upsetting. How to solve this problem? Today, let’s explore this together. What exactly is a quality issue? At a quality review meeting, I once said to my boss, \"Firstly, in our company, no matter what the issue is—whether it’s customer complaints, fines, or rework on the production line—we like to label it as a quality problem. Once it’s classified as such, all the blame falls on the quality department. For example, last month our client, Huawei in Shenzhen, returned a batch of goods to us. The colleagues from the sales department went to ask the manager for reimbursement for the shipping costs associated with returning those goods. When asked why the return was necessary, the sales team replied that it was due to a quality issue. The manager immediately came to see me, speaking in an accusatory tone, and asked why there were again quality problems. But when I told her that it was caused by errors in the drawings provided by the engineering department, she stopped talking right away.\" Now, I have a question for everyone: what exactly is a quality issue? Who can explain it to me? ” Now things got interesting – everyone present, including the boss, the vice president, and the managers of various departments, was stunned. After all, people always talk about \"quality issues\"; any problem can be attributed to quality problems and then passed on to the quality department. As a result, quality has become a framework into which every mistake is stuffed. The quality department is working tirelessly, but with no results; the quality manager gets scolded every day. High-level awareness is of the utmost importance; it is essential to make the boss or top management realize or acknowledge that: \"The company has no quality problems – only management problems.\" ”To achieve this goal, it is possible to analyze some major customer complaints and identify the underlying causes. For manufacturing companies, problems arise from one of the following reasons: poor design, defective raw materials, or poor manufacturing quality. Upon further analysis, it is definitely issues such as design review, staff training, supplier selection, planning, and employee motivation mechanisms – all of which are management-related problems. To convince the boss, evidence is important. For example: \"A few days ago, after a version upgrade, the supplier delivered components from the old version; I found this strange. Don’t all of our custom parts have their part numbers changed along with the version upgrade? Why wasn’t that the case this time?\" I went to see Kim (the manager of the Materials Technology Department), and his reply was: ‘We believe that if something can be managed properly, then we won’t change the material code; if it can’t be managed properly, then we will change the material code.’ ’Moreover, I conducted a separate investigation later regarding the management of custom version upgrades, and found that the company didn’t have any documents outlining procedures for this task. ”It’s a real case; the boss is well aware that such things happen in his company every day, so he has no choice but to admit it. Keep the three no-principles in mind: First, do not accept substandard products. Refusing to accept substandard products means that employees must check the products delivered to them prior to processing to determine whether they are of acceptable quality; if any issues are found, they have the right to refuse to accept those products and report the problem to the previous stage in the production process promptly. Personnel in the preceding processes must immediately halt processing, investigate the cause, and take corrective measures to ensure that quality issues are detected and rectified in a timely manner, thereby preventing waste caused by further processing of defective products. II. Do not produce defective products. Not producing defective products means that, after receiving qualified products from the previous stage, strict adherence to the operating procedures is maintained during processing at this stage to ensure the quality of the finished products. The preparatory work such as inspections and verifications before the task is carried out thoroughly ； Pay attention to the process conditions during operations by keeping an eye on wild birds, in order to avoid or detect abnormalities early and reduce the likelihood of producing defective products. Being well-prepared and having it verified throughout the process is key to avoiding defective products. Only by not producing any defective products can it be possible to prevent them from flowing out and being accepted. III. Prevent the release of defective products. Preventing the release of defective products means that after employees complete the processing in a particular step, it is necessary to check and verify the quality of the products. Once defective items are detected, the production process must be stopped immediately; such defective items must be halted at that stage, and measures must be taken to handle them as well as to prevent similar issues from occurring in the future. This process must ensure that only qualified products are transferred, as those that are not will be rejected by the next process or by the \"customer\". Resolving quality issues is the responsibility of the Quality Department. Do you have any good suggestions?