The Psychology of Quality and More

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Process quality and ETVX

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Quality in the process | ETVX

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Quality in the process

A quality process has the right inputs and performs the right actions to produce outputs that meet the needs of customer processes.

Definitions of quality thus include:

• Fitness for purpose
• Right output, right time, right place
• Customer satisfaction

ETVX

There are four places where the quality can be specified and checked:

• Entry criteria define what inputs are required and what quality these must be to achieve the exit criteria. Entry criteria should be communicated to supplier processes, to become their exit criteria. If supplier processes are sufficiently well controlled, then there is no need to check inputs.

• Task definitions specify the actions within the process.

• Validation definitions identify test points within the process and define the tests and criteria for checking at these points. This enables problems to be caught close to their cause, reducing rework and scrap costs, and enabling problem causes to be addressed.

• Exit criteria define what outputs are required and what quality these must be to meet the needs of customer processes. Exit criteria may be derived from the entry criteria of customer processes.

Together, these make up what is known as the ETVX model (as below), which can be used to define the process and the quality required within it completely.

Fig. 1. The ETVX model

In process improvement, it can be useful to apply this model to processes that are suspected of being troublesome, in order to identify measures to identify specific problems.

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