How can you improve quality without overspending?

As Contractors, we should comply with the contractual requirement, but it does not always mean we deliver more than required. So, this perspective should also be considered when identifying and prioritising the development of the project quality plan.

You cannot prioritize everything at once. There's no sustainable change like that. You'll need time to test, pilot, and adjust.

The article proposes the use of fishbone diagram as a tool to identify and and prioritize the most critical issues. My perception is the fishbone diagram can be an useful tool for initial analysis and that it should be complemented by the related cause-effect diagram to understand the causal relationships of the items in the fishbone diagram. The cause-effect diagram can enable visualization of the problem for a thorough evaluation of the depth and breath of the analysis. For instance: defect creation and escape (breath) and management system failures (depth).

Internal audits can be helpful if you have a set of requirements and/or standards to use as a checklist such as ISO 15189. More senior staff can be the auditors of individual lab departments and don’t forget safety.

To improve quality without overspending: 1. Prioritize key areas needing improvement. 2. Focus on process efficiency and waste reduction. 3. Implement lean practices. 4. Train and engage employees for better results. 5. Monitor and adjust strategies for cost-effectiveness. 6. Invest in technology when ROI is clear. 7. Seek low-cost, high-impact solutions. 8. Continuously evaluate and refine processes.

You can mix and match different quality improvement methods. Use the method best suited for the project or objective. A great place to learn these methods is the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

Be careful to be clear on the problem and cautious, too, to avoid analysis paralysis. And remember, "garbage in, garbage out." Data needs to be accurate, reliable so data quality planning may be crucial to the improvement effort.

Try to find a Quality Tool that fits your needs and also is easy for you to train others as you go. Each one, teach one. A safe simple continuous improvement and continuous education program can go hand in hand.

A 5 Whys with a well-done PDCA can be the solution to countless problems. Keep it simple and do the best that can be done in a timely manner with the resources already available.

Culture or learning from mistakes is the best method of training .if we can stop the recurrence. it mean system has being improved ,system improvement mean people engagement and problem solving. if the system can fulfill the internal customer requirements they will lead to a happy end customer. Simply make sure internal variation is minimum and internal customer is happy. process quality improvement mean product quality improvement.

A big enabler in the quality are the people. Without people living your quality philosophy you will always repeating the same problems in your production or development. Right first time is rhetorical key word but always in parallel to let the people learn from theirs mistakes.

Production is the beating heart of the process. Involve the team in creating the 5whys and open your ears to suggestions for improvement to be used in PDCA. Often, the production itself knows what to do to avoid problems.

What makes people proud of the work they do? Now can you teach that little extra how and why to go with the what? Be real with people and they will be real with you.

Quality comes not from inspection, but from the improvements to the production process. Deming Quote Out of Crisis. Check it out from this Quality Guru.

In the end you need to have the same targets for everyone in the company and not have targets that are contradictory to each other and this is the magic. How can you balance the individual targets with e.g. delivery on time ? Sometimes we put our pressure to deliver on time but we still need to focus on quality and here start people to complaining that quality management is slow and raises the lead time. Better quality but always with enough resources !

Without data, nothing can be measured, therefore, it cannot be improved. Seek data before starting the improvement cycle. The history will help you visualize the progress made, as well as provide ideas for how to deal with future problems.

Speak with data, but keep it simple and clear. Too much data can be convuluted and confusing. Keep it clean and clear, ask for feedback. Visual cues that are color coded. Can everyone reach the same conlusion from your data presentation?

Use data analytics and data model capabilities to model engineering processes and value stream maps by integrating with operations ERP and cloud. Use advanced features like AI and machine learning on top of these models to predict faults, product error detection and optimize process yield. On the other hand collect customer user experience/service data and apply customer centric measures to facilitate overall leverage over data.

Kaizen every day. Continue the cycle of improvement. Use the data collected and lessons learned to anticipate problems and nip them in the bud. A near defect today could turn out to be a major defect tomorrow if nothing is done.

Use strategic policy deployment tools like Hoshin Kanri/X Matrix to translate organizational strategy from top down management approach by engaging all the people in the organisation and track short term and year wise operational improvements through balanced scored framework based data models.

Steps 1-5 are the same steps you would use if you wanted to improve quality while overspending. Don't count on this nonsense for real answers to questions... join an active Quality Assurance community where there is actual discussion going on. Message Boards, Discords, etc.

We can improve quality without overspending by just focusing on COPQ (cost of poor quality) which has 2 components: lnternal failure cost, and external failure cost.

You should be focus to avoid and reduced as maximum your Non Quality costs internal and external. Invest with control in the evaluation cost and try to put all the focus in the prevention cost. In evaluation costs move working and switching from detection to occurrence. And create a real Quality mindset moving from preventive versus reactive

Operational excellence is another factor that can be considered. Quality is a cross cutting department (more of supporting Department). If Operations Department ensures every step of the process is 'quality sensitive', wastes will be reduced and hence improve overall cost of production.

To reduce No quality costs, the best way is a robust design and project and invest in efficient processes. Quality costs comes from bad design, project issues not solved, weak processes and general production issues.

Without spend too much..... this is not the best way to start any improvement activity. Cost should be related to the savings. We can not have a unique approach and should be modulated facing the problem omplexity or savings expected. Working in non quality costs is always a saving going to the lats line in the P&L of a company