On the use of quality tools: a case study

Abstract

Organizations need to improve their processes to continually achieve customer satisfaction and, to do that in an effective and efficient way, should use quality tools. The main objective of this research project is to improve the level of quality through the use of quality tools in a company in the installation phase. The PDCA cycle is applied as a methodology to trigger the use of quality tools in problems solving. It is also intended to verify the effectiveness of the PDCA cycle as a methodology for quality tools implementation. A case study was performed starting with the diagnosis of the quality management function, identifying the most critical processes. Subsequently, an analysis of the historical data of the company was made to detect problems and prioritize actions. After, the intervention focused on solving a specific process problem following the PDCA cycle and using quality tools in all its steps. The presented methodology can help companies to increase the use of quality tools which, according to recent study, continues to have little use. All tools have proved to be useful and effective. The application of the Taguchi method to determine the optimum combination of factors of a station (together with other improvement actions) caused a 50% decrease of the most critical defective component and an overall reduction of 29% in the level of nonconformities in the preparation section.