CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT THROUGH INTEGRATION OF QUALITY TOOLS

The relationship between major quality tools such as quality function development (QFD), failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), design of experiments (DOE) and statistical process control (SPC) is analyzed through an extensive review of the literature and the concurrent quality engineering philosophy, and a basic structure for the integration of quality tools is presented. An integrated quality management system (IQMS) is developed using C++ Builder, running in the Windows 2000 Server environment with the basic internet connections, and SQL Server 2000 as the platform for developing the database. An illustrative example applying IQMS to the continuous quality improvement for a crane equipment manufacturing is reported. The result shows that the application of IQMS can optimize the process of design and manufacturing, shorten the cycle time of product, reduce the cost, and realize quality improvement continuously. The proposed integrated framework with IQMS is believed to be applicable to continuous quality improvement in many manufacturing companies.