Changes for Quality

There are shifts in businesses that are prompting changes for Quality. What does this mean for the quality professional?

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The Way We Test Matters

When our products don’t work in their intended use environments, or we’re starting to see field failures happen, we could look to bad product from producers or incorrect requirements or specifications. Or, maybe how testing was performed didn’t match up with the use environment. Our product requirements might be right, but our test requirements might…

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Understanding the Purposes behind Kaizen

You’ve heard of kaizen but are not sure what it is. Is it the right methodology for your project or organization? Should you host a kaizen event? Before we really talk about kaizen, we need to talk about Lean. Lean is a philosophy, a way a company operates. A company that is Lean is focused…

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Quality and Cross-Functional Teams

I’m a fan of cross-functional teams. My main reason is that the different perspectives that each person brings from their respective areas of the business helps create a more complete vision of product and performance risk. Part of quality (and design!) means assessing and managing risk, and I’ve seen time and again the power of bringing people together: better understanding,…

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Product Development’s Important Influence on Monitoring After Launch

Our design is finally done going to be released to the market. It’s exciting. But before we hand off our design and move on to the next thing, there’s something you need to consider: do we have a good plan in place to capture data about the device, post-market? Because of your role as a designer in product…

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Quality and Reliability are Inputs, Well Before Prototype Designs

You’re at the end of your design process, proud of what you’ve accomplished. And, then come other people from other cross functional groups and they’re saying, “No.” Quality engineering and reliability engineering friends are pointing out some problems with your design.   It’s important to know that Quality and Reliability are inputs into your design process. It is not quality control…

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