- QUALITY ENGINEERING: In contrast to quality control or QA, quality analyst, the Quality engineers role is to devise systems, procedures to automate quality functions. The objective is to get high quality but with reduced cost to quality and reduced minimum testing, With the garment industry spending close to 14% of sales turnover on cost of quality and going up to 30% for some factories; the industrial engineer has got a big role in quality engineering.
- The cost of quality in Indian garment manufacturing companies done by Rajesh Bheda for the Government finds that on an average 14% of manufacturing cost is for quality and in some cases it goes even up to 30% of turnover. Even many factories do not calculate the cost to quality and are not aware of the cost going down the drain could be around 20%.
- If the cost of quality can be brought down to 6% from existing 14%, the profits of the company can go up by 50%.
- The quality engineer has to work with the quality team and develop checking procedures, methods, documentation and bring in better processes and MIS reports to ensure better quality, and satisfy the buyer and at the same reduce the cost to quality.
- Quality engineering and management is about reducing the variablity in products and processes, quality costs and to provide maximum satisfaction to the customers through improved product performance.
- They work with quality assurance and quality control teams to develop processes, test procedures and implement systems that ensure the products and processes fulfill quality standards, meet safety regulations, and satisfy client expectations…
- Estimated that on an average industry spends 14 % + of sales turnover on quality.
- The first step for the organization is to calculate the cost of quality, which should cover appraisal/checking costs, internal failure costs like rework, repair, scrapping, down grading etc. and the external failure costs like order cancellation, debit notes, loss of goodwill with customers. Once costs are ascertained, we should focus on the causes for higher losses and device systems and processes to permanently overcome such issues.
