Why is it sometimes so hard to implement process capability studies?

Abstract

In a recent survey, performed at the Division of Quality Technology & Statistics, Lulea University, Sweden, it has been studied how 100 Swedish organisations conduct process capability studies. As a result from the survey it was obvious that many theoretical aspects of how process capability studies should be conducted were not considered within the organisations where process capability studies actually were conducted. This fact led to a second survey, trying to explain this gap between theory and practice. This paper focuses on the result from this second survey. It has been found that the reason why the implementation of process capability studies sometimes fails is mainly due to management errors, but also due to some facts of reality, traditional personal attitudes and methodological issues. All identified reasons to failures in implementation of process capability studies are illustrated in an Ishikawa diagram. Most of the obstacles causing difficulties when implementing process capability studies can probably also be related to the implementation of other “hard” methods of TQM.