Producing a “Quality
Product” is an idea that can be debated for hours. A company can spend endless amounts of money
to ensure a quality product; knowing what extents to go to ensure that quality
is the million dollar question though. To
me, quality is something that needs to be looked at on a case-by-case basis; one
cannot assume every product requires the same level of quality.
For example,
imagine you are a company producing medical beds for hospitals. Parts of the bed, like the legs, need
particular care in terms of quality. They
must have a tight tolerance in terms of length, so a patient won’t roll out
because of a slant. They also need to be
strong enough to hold even the heaviest of patients. A failure in that regard could be fatal. Extensive testing quality checking is vital
to ensure that these parts are of the highest quality possible.
Now consider
a logger chopping firewood. What exactly
is a quality piece of wood? From experience, I can say that for the most part
if it burns, it is a quality piece of firewood.
The money and effort spent on quality should be exponentially less than
that of the hospital beds. Is it necessary
to have an employee measure the length and circumference of every piece of
firewood down to the thousandth of an inch? Absolutely not.
What I’m getting
at is, the customer/intended use of the product is what really gauges the level
of quality system needed by the producer.
People commonly talk of the negatives of under-monitoring the quality of
a product. What isn’t often mentioned is
that over-spending on quality is expensive and can sink a company. Finding that happy medium is what’s important
if a successful, long-lasting business is desired.
-CM
No comments:
Post a Comment