3.8 Total Quality and Safety
Always a matter of central attention, safety today has become an area of primary social as well as technical emphasis throughout world marketplaces. The safety of automobiles, pharmaceuticals, energy-generating plants, household appliances, toys, paints, health care, clothing and fabrics, construction, and a very broad spectrum of products and services is under close scrutiny.
Standards, programs, and measurements by producers and buyers and by governments strongly emphasize the prevention of product-or service induced accidents which may threaten human life, welfare, or property. The attention is both to the direct effect of the product and service in terms of its accident-free operation and to the indirect impact upon safety-the so-called side effect result, such as of a hospital-administered test or drug or of a fabric in clothing or household furnishings.
It was established earlier that safety is an overriding parameter of quality. Therefore,product and service safety represents a central and integral focus throughout total-quality-control programs. Safety considerations exist across what some have called the entire ‘cradle-to-grave’ scope of total quality control. They can no longer be dealt with effectively by narrow approaches confined to the work of a single function group in the company, as was the case in more traditional safety-oriented activities of an earlier and less demanding era
An example of this earlier, narrower approach to product quality and safety is the case of a successful and well-managed consumer electronics products company. In this firm, product safety had historically been handled as a design engineering matter supported by a dedicated and competent safety review committee. The system was considered ‘foolproof’ until an order for 10,000 power amplifiers was processed in accordance with a design that had been reviewed and determined ‘safe’.
The amplifiers had a metallized on-off knod linked with a shaft that passed very close in the chassis to the power supply transformer that generated very high voltage and current. Four of the shafts used in the 10000 amplifiers passed through sampling incoming inspection with a burr because the inspection plan had not been designed to screen out the passage of all burrs. When the metalized knob was turned to the On position, the burr in these four shafts bridged the power supply and therefore made the knob electrically ‘hot’. The narrow approach to product in this company safety in this company was a failure and was replaced by a modern, organizationwide, total-quality-control program
A principal aim of quality programs in today’s companies must be to assure total product-safety confidence before any product is released to the marketplace. The strong total quality system will be structured to explore all reasonable design alternatives, question whether any aspect of a product’s design may contribute to its misuse or abuse, assess the effect of a failure or defect in any component,part, and predict the likelihood of failure and the degree of severity of possible consequences should it occur.