Personal thoughts on quality management in China

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This post was last edited by yuanyongan on 2012-3-23 at 16:49. I have been working in quality management for about seven years, with my responsibilities covering basic areas such as supplier management, on-site quality control, project quality, and management systems. I have also learned a little bit about measurement. The enterprises involved mainly include joint ventures, state-owned enterprises, and private enterprises. It is mainly focused on the automotive industry. I would like to share my own views on quality management; I welcome everyone’s feedback. At present, quality management in China is primarily focused on quality control, mainly aiming to prevent the release of defective products and to handle customer complaints and grievances. Enough work has not been done in terms of quality prevention and preliminary quality planning. I used to work at a very small private company, where I was responsible for basic supplier management. I remember that the company was preparing to implement an ISO system; it seems they had tried to do this before, but the effort was abandoned later on. This time, they were starting over again. The boss really wants to do things properly, but it seems that this is a common problem in family-owned businesses – the boss’s intentions often fail to be put into practice. The wife of the boss’s own brother even said during an internal audit that it seems like giving each auditor a few hundred dollars would be enough to settle things. It’s shameful. . . This was also the main reason that led me to decide to leave in the end. A lot of effort was put in at that time to work with the quality manager on the system documents, but when it came to actual implementation. . . Later, I went to a company that had a department dedicated to managing systems, thinking that the systems there could be improved significantly. However, perhaps due to insufficient execution capabilities or other reasons, the company’s systems were actually at a medium-to-high level among companies that followed the 9001 standard. The person in charge of those systems was formerly the factory manager of the company; but because of the restructuring of the old state-owned enterprise, many employees did not even have a primary education, or they were relatives of older leaders or employees. As a result, the implementation of those systems remained superficial. Finally, talking about quality in the automotive industry, I personally feel that its systems are relatively standardized. Due to the requirements from the vehicle manufacturers and the pressure associated with new products and projects, not all component suppliers are able to meet every requirement, but at least they perform fairly well on a basic level. For example, requirements such as 8D and Formel-Q are still basically being followed; they aren’t just a formality like in other companies. But personally, I feel that quality management in the automotive industry still focuses mainly on quality control and addressing quality issues; there is not enough emphasis on quality planning and quality prevention at the early stages. Typically, the work of quality personnel revolves around figuring out how to solve quality problems once they arise on site How should OEMs communicate and handle quality complaints? With new projects, the problems that arose with similar parts in previous projects are not identified or prevented in the new products and projects. As a result, many of the issues that occur with the parts end up being similar, and fundamentally, these problems were not identified in advance, or if they were identified, no effective solutions were put in place. Personally, I feel that quality management in China is still at a basic level; the approach of focusing on prevention isn’t being implemented properly at all. But usually, these issues cannot be resolved fundamentally by just one person or one team; it is because such a culture has not been established within the company or enterprise, and there is no top-down effort to make changes and take this work seriously. Often, when it comes to quality issues, bosses say that the problems need to be solved at their root, but once conflicts arise regarding economics and interests, they usually choose to let quality give way to those interests. The above are some simple views I have gained over my time working in quality control. I hope everyone can point out any shortcomings. . .