Quality Management and FMEA for Enhanced Customer Satisfaction

Posted on Jan 22, 2025 in Business Administration and Management (BAM)

Understanding Customer Satisfaction and Quality Management

Satisfying customer requirements is paramount, both now and in the future. This can be achieved through various levels of quality management:

  • Product Inspection: Focuses on the manufactured product, separating good parts from bad through sampling.
  • Process Control: Focuses on the manufacturing process itself. Product quality is directly dependent on process quality. Statistical Process Control (SPC), self-inspection, and poka-yoke are used to identify and correct issues.
  • Integral Quality: Focuses on the entire business process. This involves quality assurance and prevention methods like Advanced Quality Planning (AQP) and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA).
  • Total Quality: Focuses on all agents involved in achieving quality. This encompasses Total Quality Management (TQM), which emphasizes prevention and continuous improvement, often using frameworks like the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model.

Responding to Quality and Customer Satisfaction

Quality, from an internal perspective, means minimizing defects, optimizing time, and controlling costs. From a customer perspective, it involves the quality of the product, service, and price.

Tools for Quality Management

Key tools include personnel training, common sense, quality assurance, prevention, continuous improvement, and process rationalization.

Customer Satisfaction Cycle

This cycle involves understanding the customer, orienting the company towards the customer, and measuring satisfaction. It can be visualized through these areas:

  1. Common Area
  2. Useful Effort Area
  3. Non-Useful Effort Area
  4. Non-Useful Satisfaction Area
  5. Quality Threatened Area
  6. Customer Dissatisfaction Area
  7. Superfluous Quality Area

FMEA: A Methodology for Quality Assurance

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a methodology aimed at achieving quality assurance. Through systematic analysis, it helps identify and prevent potential failure modes in both products and processes/services. FMEA systematically investigates potential weak points and quantifies and evaluates their risk of failure.

Objectives of FMEA

  • Enhance customer satisfaction.
  • Introduce a philosophy of prevention.
  • Analyze potential failures and their effects.
  • Establish procedures and detection methods for each failure mode.
  • Implement corrective and preventive actions.
  • Share knowledge and expertise.

Types of FMEA

  • Design FMEA

    Studies potential product failures and everything related to their definition. It typically involves two types of analyses:

    • Partial Analysis: Initially analyzes the design in parts or subassemblies.
    • Full Analysis: Considers the influence of different parts on each other, working conditions, human factors, etc.

  • Process FMEA

    Analyzes product failures stemming from potential failures in process elements. Defining the objective of each operation is crucial for identifying failure modes. The process chart, created from the customer’s perspective, is essential input data.

  • Means-Installation FMEA

    A preventive analysis method that estimates the risk of faults and their consequences on the operation of production means. It helps implement corrective actions during conception, production, and exploitation.

Phases of FMEA

  1. Subject of Study and Team Training: Define the product, part, or process to be studied.
  2. Information Gathering
  3. Definition of Functions: Clarify the features or functions of the product or process. Flowcharts help identify process/function relationships.
  4. Qualitative Analysis: Based on identified functions, determine all failure modes, causes, and effects.
  5. Quantitative Analysis: Numerically classify to prioritize improvement activities. This involves assessing Severity, Occurrence, and Detection.
  6. Definition and Implementation of Actions: Focus on reducing the probability of failure rather than solely on detection.

Objectives of Implementing FMEA

  • Raise employee awareness of quality.
  • Reduce costs through preventive actions.
  • Improve customer-supplier relationships.
  • Enhance overall quality.
  • Shorten the maturation period.
  • Improve the company’s image.