Developing Practical Skills For Quality Assurance And Metrology Applications In Manufacturing

Sound quality control practices can be critical to the success of a company in the highly competitive global environment. Implementing product changes quickly to meet accelerating customer demands and expectations can challenge both the quality system and the associated personnel. Companies strive to establish a strong quality management team and effective quality procedures, yet many employers find newly hired technical graduates unprepared to apply quality control concepts learned in the classroom. Skills and experiences beyond basic coursework are often necessary for meaningful and correct application of quality control concepts 16 . Most technical manufacturing programs require some level of quality control training including basic coverage of quality management concepts and statistical data analysis, but offer little insight into implementation issues and the practical problems faced by industry 4 . This approach can be quite effective in establishing a basic understanding of quality control theory, but may leave gaps in a student’s ability to successfully apply that understanding in the manufacturing environment. Quality control on the plant floor is practiced much differently than it is presented in the classroom with numerous opportunities for inaccurate data collection and unclear conclusions 13 . Experienced quality professionals often find that newly hired graduates have difficulty with issues such as gaging, data interpretation, and conforming to a production and cost oriented environment. While many of these issues are a matter of experience, both industry professionals and the related literature indicate that applied quality concepts should be added to basic quality control curricula at the college level. Every effort should be made to strengthen students’ skills by combining theoretical knowledge with practical situations 10 . This paper investigates the practical skills needed by entry level personnel in the quality control environment. The procedure used to gain this information includes: