QUALITY ENGINEERING FOR CONTINUOUS PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT IN PRODUCTS AND PROCESSES: A REVIEW AND REFLECTIONS

摘要

In the face of stiff and demanding competition internationally, there is a growing resolve in the industrial community to provide the customers and the market in general products and services of superior quality. Quality engineering has been established as an important continuous performance improvement methodology during the last decade. Consequently, numerous developments and innovative methods have been reported in the literature by researchers and practitioners alike. In this paper, a critical appraisal of recent developments, improvisations, and innovations in the field of quality engineering has been made. It is observed that there exists an immense body of knowledge in terms of better approaches, techniques, methodologies, aids, analysis tools, etc. However, most of these are oriented toward product improvement or process improvement in a localized manner, and a systematic approach for the application of quality engineering encompassing all the importnat functions in an organization is lacking. In view of this a comprehensive quality engineering methodology is also proposed in this paper so that the implementation of quality engineering in an organization will be more effective, and the benefits to be achieved will be substantial in real-life situations.