Explain why? when 100% inspection takes place,errors in product or service may still get through to customer?

Question

Could u please illustrate with a product and services of your own choice. what might be done to try to minimize such errors occuring?

Answer 1

100% inspection is very, very rare
and stuff happens
humans are not perfect
design improvements can decrease external failures

Answer 2

The concept of 100% inspection is a very lofty goal, but attainable only at great expense, and not possible in all industries. Human error still enters into the equation at some point.

Let's say that your company, ABC Widgets, Inc. makes souvenir snow globes with the Empire State Building inside. So you've got acrylic hemispheres, black plastic base, mineral oil, and little plastic snowflakes and the building model (or since we're going with a cheesy example, maybe little plastic apples instead of snow) Even if your assembly line goes slow enough that each and every one of these snowglobes is examined by each of ten inspectors for a minimum of one full minute, every now and then something might get through, for any number of reasons. You'd get pretty tired and bored after starting intently at snowglobes all day long, all week long, so maybe your attention would wander a little bit. Maybe all ten of you really just don't care as much as you used to. Maybe the flaw isn't visible to the naked eye, some defect at the very edge of the acrylic hemisphere that will eventually cause all the mineral oil to leak out all over the shipping container. Maybe the little apples are red on one side but white on the other and when all ten of you looked, the red side was facing up. Maybe you don't shake them when inspecting them and don't notice that all the little apples are actually permanently stuck to the bottom.

Even if you automate the inspection process for your product, the machine that performs the inspection is only as good as the human who designed and built it, and then only as good as the human who maintains it. Eventually, someone will make a mistake or the equipment will fail, and some error will get through.

Quality assurance is a big issue in all industries, and it's a balancing act -- if you have to exhaustively test each and every product prior to shipping it, you'd never make enough money to stay in business. The best you can do is sample from entire lots of your product and hope that a thorough examination will ensure that a minimal number of defective items gets through. Couple that with backup automation that can detect the simple things along the assembly line so your inspectors can keep looking for more complex problems, and you can approach as close to 100% detection of defects as is humanly possible and economically feasible.

Answer 3

Having worked in a grocery store and in customer service I (hope anyway) feel that I am pretty patient with store employees- I understand that there are new people , it takes time to figure out where everything is and things don't always go your way- clerks and customer service agents put up with a lot from customers and though there are some cases where the clerk is at fault, often times they get their ear chewed off over something they have no control over. For me, my biggest pet peeve is when I am in a grocery store and there are 2 lines open and 5 people in each line- you see other employees walking around, but they are not 'cashiers' so they cannot help you- or in a store like KMart or Wal Mart- there is only one person in the entire store trained for that department. When I worked customer service a long time ago- when the lines were slow, rather than having the cashiers stand around and do nothing, I would send them to different departments to be trained so they could cover lunches and bathroom breaks and no department was short an employee because though one employee may be a master at one department, they had at the very least a basic knowledge of the rest of them and could work in them in a pinch. Another thing I hate is those self checkout lanes- yes, this sort of solves the problem of 2 cashiers open and 20 people in line but it is so impersonal and half the time you have to call a cashier to help anyway because it does not work right. The only things that will turn me away completely from shopping at any particular store would be if the store were dirty and smelly- produce was rotten, rotting (and yes, I walked in a major name grocery store in a small town once -the store smelled, I grabbed a newspaper and went to the produce section only to find the vegetables wilted and sickly looking. I picked up a cucumber and it was mushy and gross. I left my basket and walked out of the store- it gets that bad) The other would be rude employees- I am not talking about just unfriendly but outright rude, gum smacking, wont look at you or answer your questions, carrying on personal phone coversations or not halting personal coversations with other employees while they are serving you, not considerate of how they handle the items you are about to pay for- I think those are the only two things that would drive me completely away from a store - eveything else can be an irritation but it is not worth getting upset and holding a grudge over

Answer 4

It gets down to variation. Every process has variation and when you deploy 100% inspection, there will be variation (i.e. defects undetected) and hence nonconforming/defective product will make it to the customer. The focus should be on what is an acceptable level of un-detected defects. If you expect to detect 100% of all defects, you should first determine what that will cost (i.e. people, equipment, time). You will most often find that it is cost prohibitive to be 100% accurate. So, the question asked should be, what is our tolerance level for un-dected defective product. Once you know the answer to that question, you can deploy the necessary controls to ensure the conformance to that level. Don't forget, there will be variation, so if you want to be 98% accurate, your system will need to be, for example, 99% effective to allow for variation.

Also, another point to consider is how well are you responding when a defect does reach the customer. Most humans understand error, what they have little tolerance for is being treated badly once they have received a defective product.

Answer 5

Let's assume some materials delivered are substandard and the need to inspect 100% because the substandard material cannot be returned or rejected for whatever reason.

Your manufacturing cost now has just skyrocketed, and the end product margin is much slimmer.

Too answer your question. Because we are human. To help prevent errors and flaws, pay the people a substantial amount more than they would expect.

So, bottom line 100% inspection is costly, and unless you are doing high end, or mission critical widgets, like pacemakers, or aerospace gear, it's unnecessary.


~Trey

Answer 6

In my opinion, 100% inspection means that only one of every , (say for example), 100 items on an assembly line are inspected for defects. 100% of that item is inspected and the rest of the run is passed based on that one random check. If a defect is found, the entire run is put on hold for individual inspection. Don't quote me.

There are many products that are mass produced and it is not viable to bother inspecting each and every one of them so retailers and suppliers make it easy to return defective items as in the case of the mini LED lights. Tires are more likely to be inspected closely after the big recall a few years back. But you must keep in mind that you get what you pay for. More handling means more money.

Answer 7

I work in the printing industry,in a high quality operation.Inspection must occur at every step in the production process,but errors which occur,or are not captured,until late in the process,cost more money to correct.For example,a spelling error that isn't caught until the final step means that the time and paper and ink put into the product to that point will be lost if you have to correct it.Obviously,the best thing you can do is to encourage employees at every step to inspect the whole job,not just their part of it.

The current "Pop"term is "ownership"of the process.(snorts derisively).It would be more honest to explain to the employees that survival of the company is at stake.An unhappy client is a lost client,in this day and age of intense market pressures.If you lose money on one job,by correcting errors,you may get a chance to make it up on a later project.

Be honest with the client,too.involve them in the decision.We have had clients decide to ignore spelling errors and other problems(especially if they mis-spelled the word to start with)rather than go to the expense of starting over.Some clients will accept a lower quality product if the price is renegotiated-obviously this wouldn't work in health and safety issues-but if it's esoteric..well,money talks.

Answer 8

You don't really believe a company actually inspects 100% of their products, do you?

Answer 9

Because, if people are doing the "100%" inspection, you won't have 100% perfection. We're human - we make mistakes.

Answer 10

Because the inspections are performed by human beings, and humans are prone to err, that is, people make mistakes.

Answer 11

The defects get through due to human error. Its not sexy but it the real world.