Quality Control Methods & Examples | What Is Quality Control? – Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

Video Transcript

What Is Quality Control?

Super Sports Warehouse is a company that makes nearly everything you could think of for nearly every sport. Because of its wide variety of supplies and equipment, the company receives orders from hundreds of stores each month. The large amount of orders means that Super Sports Warehouse needs to be sure it produces products that are of good quality and function properly. In order to provide superior products, the company must use a process known as quality control.

Quality control is a process that helps a company make sure it creates quality products and that staff and management alike make minimal mistakes. Throughout this lesson we will learn about the different types of quality control and why they are useful to a company.

Quality Control in Depth

Quality control helps a company reduce errors and produce products efficiently that are of great quality; but how does a company implement this? For Super Sports Warehouse, it offers training courses for managers and employees. This helps keep them updated on ways to do things better. The company also makes goals and objectives for its employees and products to meet. This ensures that each employee knows what they are working for and what is expected from them.

Four Types of Quality Control

You may be wondering how quality control works. Well, there are four types of quality control, and each of them has unique characteristics. In this section we will break each of them down so that we can understand how they might be used.

The first type is process control. When creating any type of product there is a process, meaning all products start with pieces and end with a finished good. Process control is the type of quality control that makes sure the processes within a company are functioning correctly. This means that all of the activities included in each process are operating at a nice stable pace with little variation.

An example might be making sure the machines are operating correctly and producing products that do not have flaws. Process control also makes sure that a company is performing at its target level. For example, when Super Sports Warehouse makes basketballs, the company makes sure that each ball goes through the same process at a time frame that produces enough basketballs to fulfill orders. When the basketballs are completed, process control helps Super Sports Warehouse make sure there are little to no flaws and variations so that the company can ship quality basketballs to all its customer stores.

Another type of quality control is acceptance sampling, which is the process of determining an inspection plan that works to meet the needs of the company. You see, sometimes inspecting and testing every single product is too costly for a company, or even destructive for the product. While the company needs to inspect at least some of its products, testing all of them may not be an effective solution for every company. Acceptance sampling lets a company find somewhere in the middle of testing every product and not inspecting any of them. For example, Super Sports Warehouse inspects 1 out of every 50 basketballs. Inspecting just a few basketballs allows Super Sports Warehouse to save time and money while being able to determine if the entire order should be rejected or kept.

The third type of quality control is known as control charts, which are valuable tools that help a company analyze the variation in a process. While process control already monitors the actual processes in a business, control charts help a company visualize these processes. Think of it as a second look to provide reassurance that a company’s processes are functioning correctly. The charts also allow a company to analyze where there are problems and make necessary changes. There are four states that a process can be broken down into, which are ideal, threshold, brink of chaos, and state of chaos.

Ideal is when a process is functioning at 100%. In other words, for Super Sports Warehouse, this means that 100% of its products meet expectations, and the process is predictable.

Processes that fall within the threshold state mean that products do not consistently meet expectations even though the process is predictable. For example, some of the basketballs will have flaws instead of 100% of them being perfect, but the process itself is still functioning correctly.

Products in the brink of chaos stage are meeting expectations; however, the process is not predictable. So, the basketballs are still meeting quality expectations, but the process is not always functioning in a manner that is predictable and stable.

During the state of chaos stage, the process is not predictable and the products do not meet expectations. For Super Sports Warehouse, this would mean the basketballs were not of quality standard, and the process of making them is not predictable either.

The last step of quality control is product quality control, which focuses on the product itself and is the act of concentrating on making a product that meets all expectations and standards. This means when a product comes off an assembly line, like a car, it has all four tires. A car with only three tires would be a flawed product that a company would want to catch before it is shipped out. Super Sports Warehouse creates many different products, so it is important to have a process in place to make sure that customers will be happy with every product the company makes and that the products meet the high standards the company is known for.

Lesson Summary

Let’s recap. Quality control helps a company make sure it’s producing products that meet expectations and are of good quality. It also helps a company make sure that there are little errors with both production and employees. Training and goals help a company strive to achieve high quality.

There are four main types of quality control: process control focuses on the processes in a company, while acceptance sampling helps create an inspection plan. Control charts analyze product expectations and the predictability of the processes, and the four states of ideal, threshold, brink of chaos, and state of chaos are used when analyzing processes. Finally, product quality control makes sure a company is making quality products.