A systematic methodology for quality control in the product development process

Abstract

Quality control in the product development process is vital to the final quality of a product. Customer requirements are the foundation of quality control. Product development has to be linked with customers through customer demand and quality characteristics (QCs). Therefore, QCs are the key control factors in the whole product development process. Quality control is focused on how to translate customer requirements into Product-QCs, and decompose and transform Product-QCs into Component-QCs, Part-QCs, Geom-Feature-QCs and Tolerance-QCs correctly. The representation of QCs has been studied and their features in different stages of the product development process have been analysed. A systematic approach is presented that would support quality control through decomposing, transforming, optimizing, evaluating and monitoring QCs in product development. The corresponding model-oriented Quality Characteristics Processing Unit (QCPU) is proposed, which consists of describing and formulating customers’ requirements, and decomposing and transforming QCs, optimizing QCs or sub-QCs, and analysing and validating QC results. A process model combined with quality tools for decomposing and transforming of the QCs is put forward. The relationship between quality tools and each step of QC processing is depicted. On the basis of the proposed methods and approaches, a quality control software system, QQ-Dplatform, has been developed. The conceptual model, functional model and the browser/server-based system architecture of QQ-Dplatform are introduced and discussed. System platform and tools are studied and evaluated using a simple case.