Three Key Checkpoints to Ensure Prototype Quality

**Three Key Checkpoints to Ensure Prototype Quality**

Quality is the lifeblood of an enterprise, and its importance cannot be overstated. In the prototype industry, for example, rework due to quality issues not only affects the entire production schedule but also impacts employee morale, potentially leading to further problems. During the prototype production process, the experience and skills of programmers are crucial. Through their operations, programmers can ensure the rationality, feasibility, convenience, and effectiveness of the prototype production process, which is a prerequisite for quality control. Ensuring quality is essential, so how can we effectively control the quality of prototype production?

### What is Quality?

Quality can be divided into process quality and production quality. Process quality refers to the ability of a process plan to produce qualified products, while production quality refers to the production capability to maintain quality during the manufacturing process.

### First Checkpoint: Cultivating Three Types of Awareness

Simply put, quality = conscience + responsibility. Only by ingraining this concept in everyone's mind can truly high-quality products be produced.

1. **Self-Inspection Awareness**

   - Product quality is manufactured, not inspected. The secret to production quality control is for everyone to do their part well. Employees are required to self-inspect products passing through their process. Only if they consider the product to be qualified can it move on to the next process or workshop. Any non-conforming products found during self-inspection should be decisively sorted and not treated with a luck mindset.

2. **Mutual Inspection Awareness**

   - Products coming from the previous process or workshop must be inspected and deemed qualified before continuing production. Any quality issues from the previous process must be promptly reported. Adhere to the principles of not producing, accepting, or passing on defective products.

3. **Specialized Inspection Awareness**

   - After self-inspection and mutual inspection, the next step is the specialized inspectors' responsibility. Specialized inspectors must have a strong quality control awareness.

### Second Checkpoint: Follow Process Control

A good process is essential for a good result. For quality control, following process control is necessary to manage quality effectively.

1. **First Article Inspection Control**

   - Before prototype production, all materials entering production must be thoroughly verified and inspected, and the performance of the tools to be used must be confirmed.

2. **In-Process Inspection Control**

   - During production, management and quality inspection personnel should conduct spot checks on the prototype, focusing 80% of their effort on weak links in the production, such as new employees' operations and equipment performance.

3. **Final Inspection Control**

   - At the end of the production line, special attention must be given to the final prototype. Employees tend to become anxious as they near completion, so it is crucial to strictly control the final stages of production.

### Third Checkpoint: Utilize Two Tools

Quality control in the production process is either improving or declining. To achieve long-term quality management, managers must carry two tools: the "bright blade" and the "hidden arrow."

1. **The Bright Blade**

   - In every production meeting, analyze the quality issues encountered in previous production runs. Thoroughly discuss the impact of these quality problems, ensuring everyone understands that non-conforming products can cause significant negative effects on the company and harm customer interests. Next, analyze the causes of these quality issues and clarify quality responsibilities. This "bright blade" wielded by managers is a prerequisite for improving quality.

2. **The Hidden Arrow**

   - As the saying goes, "a hidden arrow is hard to guard against." In quality control, managers need to have this "hidden arrow" awareness to better prevent employees from becoming complacent. This keeps employees vigilant and responsible, ensuring they "do not accept non-conforming products from the previous process and do not pass non-conforming products to the next process."