Protecting Your Right to Test

I've never understood the economic value of managers!

Testing is a must. Without it you will never know when a good product will go bad because your supplier didn't test their stuff before sending it to you.

<...Testing is a must. Without it you will never know when a good product will go bad because your supplier didn't test their stuff before sending it to you....>

Japanese manufacturing philosophy goes along the lines of "we won't do it wrong in the first place".

• There is a fable about the American client that orders 3000 parts from a Japanese electronics assembler with a failure rate requirement of no more than 0.1%.
• The incensed Japanese company shipped 2997 in one box and 3 in another box in a fit of pique.
• When the client asked why they had shipped 2997 in one box and 3 in the other, the reply came back, "Those in the second box were the three faulty ones you wanted"!

Given very limited resources, it pays to get it right first time every time. Those used to having infinite resources would do well to learn the techniques before all the infinities run out.

I came a cross another good example of this....

I was at an aerosol valve manufacturer's factory looking at thier inspection and quality control problems and I made the rather flippant remark that the plastic nozzles only cost less than one pence to make...

The manager with me told me that a Taiwanese company had ordered 1 million of there nozzles a year ago and after recieving them had promptly sent 6 faulty ones back in a carfully packed package with a note saying please do NOT send us any faulty ones!!!!

6 out of 1 million was too much for them!!!

I think GM is a good example of a need to test. After owning 4 GM vehicles that failed at the same mileage 70,000-80,000 miles, for the same reason, I believe testing was either avoided or results ignored. This was not a problem of testing but of management denial-or so it seems.

As I work in the testing and inspection business, I can say that we have seen an increase in the demands for testing. This is due to the fact that in this economic climate it is now deemed necessary to test to avoid costly returns! If only this philosophy had arrived 10 or 15 years ago, then we would still have a good manufacturing infrastrucuture in developed countried around the world as opposed to having it outsourced to the cheapest supply.

The concept that verifying quality by means of testing is strictly a burden on the bottom line is typical of what is taught in MBA schools, where they also teach that a company has no responsibility to anyone other than shareholders. The fact is that the first responsibility of a company is to provide customers with what they pay for. Consider that with no customers for whatever is provided, there is seldom much income, which is usually the basis for profit.

The problem is that processes are subject to variability, and variability usually affects quality or cost of production, or both. Just like driving down the road, there is a need to steer, in order to avoid not going where you desire to go. Likewise, a bit of testing is needed to assure that the product is always what it is intended to be. Of course, the type and quantity of testing is related to the amount and types of variability in production. But no matter what, testing and evaluation of production is always needed.

The one exception is if you have a functional monopoly on computer operating systems, and enough marketing power to sell people a product that they know is deffective, but will purchase anyway. Such an organization has no reason to test, and, for them only, testing of product would be strictly a waste of time and money.