Module II.

Process Quality Improvement

Lecture -1 Why process quality improvement is important?

From operations management perspective, a process is any activity or group of activities that
takes one or more inputs, transforms them, and provides one or more outputs for its customers
(internal or external). The key to success in an organization is to understand how their processes
work to deliver the required outputs. Any process should add value and unnecessary waste
activities should be eliminated from the process steps, as per definition in Lean Management
philosophy. In the context of Quality Management philosophy, process is transformation of
inputs into output, which satisfies the required Quality Characteristics defined by the customers.
These characteristics are called ‘CTQ’s’ (Critical-to-Quality) or ‘responses’. The transformation
happens by controlling few vitals critical input and process variables (x1 ...xp ) known as
controllable variables. These variables actually influence the mean and variance of the CTQ.
Thus proper setting of these variables is critical to get the best or optimal output.

Controllable Variables
x1 x2 xp

Inputs CTQ (s) or

Responses (y)

z1 z2 zm

Uncontrollable Variables

Figure 2-1 Schematic diagram of a Process with Influential Variables

However, there are other variables (z 1 …z m ) which cannot be controlled, say room temperature,
humidity, or uneconomical to control. The variation caused in CTQ by these variables is
assumed to be the natural variability or chance cause variability. Taguchi emphasized to
minimize CTQ variability even in presence of these uncontrollable or noise variables by using
orthogonal array design based DOE.
Determining the best setting for controllable variables is the primary focus of process quality
improvement activity. If process improves, we will get the best output or responses and as a
consequence best desired quality product for the end customer. Every company focuses on
process quality improvement so as to improve their prime competitive priority (or Quality).