Quality Assurance System

The quality assurance (QA) system is often cited as a key ingredient for successful management in view of its direct relationship to many management objectives. Unfortunately, many companies depend on inspection as the cornerstone of QA. But even the best inspection won&s;t prevent the production of defective goods. The prevalent attitude among operators at such factories is that it&s;s their job to make things and the inspector&s;s job to catch mistakes. Consequently, operators are rarely held accountable for rejects produced at their stations. One problem with having inspections at the end of a production line is that the inspectors are often unable to tell which processes have caused the defects they find, which makes it difficult to devise countermeasures. The defect rate is usually calculated by dividing the total number of completed product units by the total number of manufactured units. This simple calculation method includes reworked units in the completed product total.