[Customer Focus] How enterprises control quality boils down to these three key checkpoints!

Quality is the life of an enterprise; this is a conclusion drawn from the experience or lessons of many companies, and everyone firmly believes it. The general meaning of this sentence is: If product quality is not good, it will eventually be rejected by consumers and eliminated by the market. The company's products won't sell, and the company will go bankrupt and close down. Therefore, the quality, whether good or bad, concerns the survival of the enterprise and is its lifeblood.

From another perspective, the importance of quality cannot be ignored: rework caused by quality problems not only affects production progress but, more seriously, affects employees' work morale, which can lead to more problems and further impact production progress.

If production progress cannot keep up, it directly affects delivery dates, which in turn affects sales and may even lead to lost orders. Then the factory cannot talk about making profits, and without profits, where will our wages come from? So quality not only relates to the rise and fall of the company but also concerns our own interests.

So how can we control quality well? Below I will share three checkpoints with everyone:

1, First checkpoint: Cultivate three kinds of awareness

As quality training, the most talked about is what quality is and how to do quality well. Often, you speak until your mouth is dry on stage, but the trainees want to sleep. After training, trainees whisper to each other and finally sum it up in one sentence: It's good, but not practical for us! As a trainer, hearing this is very frustrating.

What is quality? Actually, it is simply one sentence: Quality = Conscience + Responsibility, This is easy for trainees to remember and understand. Sometimes employees ask themselves, I took the company's money but didn't do a good job; am I being true to my conscience? If their poor work causes a big loss to the company, their conscience feels even worse. Production and quality inspection personnel will also ask themselves the same question.

Once everyone has this awareness, and with some proper guidance, controlling quality is not very difficult. As long as there is a bit of responsibility, quality accidents will not happen. Because Chinese people have a habit of fearing to betray their conscience, they will actively ask, how can we do quality well in the future? At this time, the trainees are teachable, and the three kinds of quality awareness can be cultivated!

First is self-inspection awareness. Product quality is made, not inspected out. The secret to production quality control is: let everyone do their own product well. Employees are required to self-inspect the products they produce; only products they consider qualified can flow to the next process or workshop. Nonconforming products found during self-inspection must be marked and placed separately.

Second is mutual inspection awareness. For products coming from the previous process or workshop, employees cannot just ignore them and blindly continue. They must inspect and confirm the products are qualified before proceeding. Quality problems found in the previous process or workshop must be promptly reported. Firmly ensure no defective products are made, accepted, or passed on.

Third is special inspection awareness. After self-inspection and mutual inspection, production supervisors can instill in dedicated inspectors that employees are doing self-inspection and special inspection while producing. As dedicated inspectors, they should have a strong quality control awareness. If the dedicated inspectors are your subordinates, communication is easier; if not, they will still accept your guidance!

2, Second checkpoint: Closely follow process control

In management, everyone focuses on results. Therefore, many friends say to me when talking about management: "It doesn't matter if it's a white cat or a black cat; catching mice is a good cat." I deeply admire the essence of this great philosophy.

But to friends who talk about result-oriented thinking, I ask them: if there is no process, where does the result come from? When they are stunned, I tell them I value the process; without a good process, there is no good result! For quality control, I believe only by closely following process control can quality be controlled.

First is first inspection control. Before the product goes online, team leaders, quality inspectors, and employees must carefully verify the materials to be used in production; confirm whether the tools are properly equipped and their performance is stable and intact. Then produce a small batch of three to five products to confirm if the products are qualified. Only after passing can mass production begin; if not, find the cause and only produce in batches after qualification.

Second is patrol inspection control. During production, managers and quality inspectors must sample products and focus 80% of their attention on weak links in production, such as inexperienced employees, key equipment, and key positions.

Third is final inspection control. At the end of the line, special attention must be paid to the final products, as employees tend to be anxious at this time. I once encountered a frightening incident: near the end of a shift, an employee was missing one product to pack, so he took a defective product, asked someone to repair it, and packed it without inspection. The team leader immediately corrected this; the product had serious quality defects. Moreover, some products are still waiting for repair at the end of the line, so the closer to completion, the stricter the control must be!

Quality control during production is either improving or declining. To achieve long-term quality management, managers must carry two weapons with them: the "bright sword" and the "hidden arrow."

The first weapon is the "bright sword"

The "Three Analyses and Three No Letting Go" activity. The saying goes that a bright sword is easy to dodge, but it depends on who wields it and what kind of sword it is. If a martial arts master holds a wooden sword, no one would say it's easy to hide; but if someone untrained holds a shining sword, would you say it's easy to hide? The weapon I talk about is a "bright sword" with a sword manual.

Every morning production meeting, analyze the quality problems encountered in yesterday's production, deeply analyze the harm of these quality problems, so everyone fully understands that once defective products leave the factory, they not only cause huge negative impacts on the company but also harm user interests.

Next, analyze the causes of these quality issues, trace back layer by layer, clarify quality responsibilities, and find loopholes.

On this basis, analyze the measures to be taken and implement them promptly to improve deficiencies.

The entire activity must truly achieve "no letting go if the cause is not found, no letting go if quality responsibility is not clarified, no letting go if corrective measures are not implemented." Managers hold the "bright sword" every day, pursuing a little quality improvement daily.

The second weapon is the "hidden arrow"

Personnel Quality Awareness Test Method. As the saying goes, hidden arrows are hard to defend against. In quality control, without this "hidden arrow," how can we eliminate employees' complacency? The implementation process of the personnel quality awareness test method is as follows: managers irregularly select some non-conforming products with inconspicuous quality defects, record their numbers or mark them, then mix them into a large batch of similar products to see if employees can detect and check them out in time and in full.

Those employees with weak quality awareness and careless work often find it difficult to score high in this kind of "test," which is unannounced and can be conducted anytime and anywhere.

Therefore, to withstand the test of the "hidden arrow," there is only one way: to maintain a high level of vigilance and responsibility at all times in work. "Do not accept non-conforming products from the previous process, and do not pass non-conforming products to the next process."