Independent and Autonomous Quality Control Function

- Do We Still Need it?

Published on October 17, 2019

Fatkhy Baridwan, ST., IPM, ASEAN Eng.

Quality Leader
3 articles

In early agricultural era, quality resulted largely from screening and culling inferior product and
grading the acceptable product. In this era, input was controlled through selection but there
was nothing more can be done. More control was introduced during the Craft man era where
input and process are controlled, and new and more controllable production technique was
introduced. But still some undetectable or uncontrollable variations in input and process
parameter limited consistency/uniformity of the end products. In both of those eras, all the
works were done by one person or small groups with similar functions.

Those ‘traditional’ method slightly changed where factory system was developed, and
supervisor role was introduced to supervise worker. Distinction between making products and
checking products’ quality was introduced, where workers focused on making products and
supervisor focused on checking product quality. But in principal, the application was still based
on assumption that ‘production quality is various and good quality product will come as part of
total production’.

As the production capacity was limited, then the higher quality expectation would result in
lower productivity, as more product would be rejected. In this case, Productivity and Quality
were set on the opposite side. And when Quality and Productivity are opposed, naturally it
would be a conflict of interest for quality workers and production workers to report to the
same managers. Then the need of independent and autonomous quality function concept was
introduced, to ensure independent quality judgement.

The concept and implementation of independent and autonomous quality function has been
rooted to industrial practices for quite long time, even until these days. However, modern
quality control concept introducing the concept of increasing quality and productivity go hand
in hand. Instead of following the “make a lot and sort the good ones” approach, modern quality
has focused on measuring and controlling the process, reducing variation in the system, and
distinguishing between special causes and common causes to achieve product quality. Each
worker is responsible for work quality. The process is becoming similar to the agricultural era
where worker who work on product also responsible to its quality, but now with more control
on process and system. Therefore, the need for independent and autonomous quality is
lessened.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/independent-autonomous-quality-control-function-do-fatkhy/
The “each worker is responsible for work quality” approach has been implemented and
commonly found in nowadays organization, especially organization which adopted a modern
type of structures which are more flexible or even virtual. Some other mature industries also
implement this concept with strengthening on the assurance side, assuring the system and
control are rigid and supporting implementation of this approach.

In my opinion, applying “each worker is responsible for work quality” approach is like using
sword with two sharp sides. It will be very useful in one side, but it can also hurt us if we don’t
use it carefully. The approach should come with at least the following pre-requisites:

1. The organization is mature in structure and work description

2. The production processes are rigid and leave no or very minimum uncertainty or
involvement of personal improvement and judgement
3. Personnel involved in the production process, including personnel of the management
side are fully competent
4. Quality culture and awareness to quality action (and reaction) are properly developed
and implemented
5. Monitoring and assurance process are in place and supported by all level of
organization.

Applying the modern approach without strengthening the pre-requisites can be dangerous to
the organization. They may run modern industrial business with agricultural-era’s quality
approach. And when monitoring is also loose, the organization may have gone too far before
they found that they are in trouble.

Kindly comment or criticize this article if you have different opinion or addition, and feel free to
share it if you think that this would give benefit to others

Jakarta, October 17, 2019

Fatkhy Baridwan, ST. IPM, Asean Eng.

#quality #independent #autonomous #learning #approach #concept #process #system

#control #measure #assurance

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/independent-autonomous-quality-control-function-do-fatkhy/