For “Quality Is Everyone’s Responsibility” to be embraced broadly it should be possible for anyone and any device/machine to be able to participate in and initiate Quality Workflows. The following figure shows the many sources of quality events. Each of these have the potential to initiate cross-functional quality workflows.
Not every quality event instance warrants using a comprehensive quality issue workflow. But each instance should be evaluated for severity and frequency and when appropriate should kickoff cross-functional quality issue workflows.
Universal Quality Issue Workflow Scenarios
In the examples below, ZFlow is used to create a quality issue workflow for the Return Material Authorization (RMA) Quality Event. RMAs are important quality events because some quality issue resulted in the customer returning products.
Once the RMA is received ZFlow creates a cross-functional workflow so that relevant teams can review and conduct failure analysis as shown below.
Once a failure report/failure analysis is completed, appropriate corrective action needs to be determined and implemented. The corrective action and implementation workflows can also be subsequently completed as shown below.
Above is an example of how a quality event such as an RMA (Return) can be used proactively to drive, root cause analysis, corrective actions and related implementation. Similar universal quality event and issue workflows can be designed to make “Quality is Everyone’s Responsibility” a reality in the organization and the supply chain.