Overview of Oracle Quality

This chapter introduces quality management and describes how Oracle Quality can be used to meet its challenges. It also provides an overview of the components of Oracle Quality and illustrates how Oracle Quality can help you meet your quality data collection and analysis requirements.

This chapter covers the following topics:

Introduction to Quality Management

Companies today operate in global markets that demand near-zero defect quality. High quality is required not just in production, but throughout the supply chain. ISO 9000 certification is a minimum requirement. To remain competitive, companies must respond to the pressures of reducing their costs while improving quality and customer service.

To address these challenges, most companies have implemented quality programs based on the principles and methodologies developed by Drs. Deming and Juran. Such programs have likely evolved over the years starting with the implementation of statistical process control (SPC); the adoption of zero-defect and continuous improvement programs; the acceptance of the total quality control (TQC) process, and a shift to the total quality management (TQM) approach.

Many companies have widespread quality requirements and consequently may have implemented several quality systems to address these requirements. Although these systems may represent a significant investment in quality processes, training, and software, users are often dissatisfied with them for a variety of reasons.

Quality Systems Today

One reason users are dissatisfied is that existing systems can't adapt to frequent changes in products and processes. Competitive pressures have shortened product life cycles. New products are launched frequently and processes must not only rapidly adapt to these changes, but also improve as they adapt.

Many quality systems can't keep up with the pace, largely because most are inflexible. They're "hardcoded" - they do not allow you to change data collection points or to collect new kinds of quality information when products and processes change.

Another typical problem is that quality systems are not always integrated with business systems. More often than not, they're standalone "pocket" databases.

Can you access critical quality data throughout your enterprise and across your supply chain with pocket databases? For example, can you associate the supplier quality data you collected at the receiving dock with the failure data you collected on the factory floor?

Do your systems cause you to collect the same data multiple times? For example, do you collect part number and quantity failed information in your automated test equipment, your shop floor PC-based SPC package, and your work order transactions system?

Maybe your analysis tools are robust, but do your quality engineers seem to spend more time locating and extracting data than they spend actually analyzing it?

Can you really afford the learning curve and ongoing maintenance costs of multiple quality collection and analysis tools?

Obviously processes and systems that are local, non-integrated, and inconsistent create hidden costs and wasted effort.

Oracle Quality Mission

The Oracle Quality mission, simply stated, is to complement and/or replace these divergent systems with an integrated, enterprise wide, flexible solution that meets your diverse quality needs.

Oracle Quality is integrated with the Oracle Applications product suite to provide unified quality data definition, data collection, and data management throughout your enterprise and across your supply and distribution networks.

Oracle Quality's flexible architecture can support a wide variety of business models and can change as rapidly as business demands.

The word complement is important here. Remember that many companies have invested quite a lot in data collection systems, automatic test equipment, statistical analysis tools, etc. Our goal is to make Oracle Quality an open system with a data repository into which you can import data from existing data collection systems and out of which you can export the quality results you have collected.

Oracle Quality Repository

Oracle Quality helps a company achieve consistent quality reporting by providing a central and accessible repository of quality information. This is a key differentiation between Oracle and other quality systems. Many other quality systems are non-integrated point solutions.

With other systems, it is nearly impossible to analyze quality data across your enterprise - data integrity is not assured and database administration can be inconsistent.

Oracle Quality ensures data integrity by validating data as it is collected. For example, if you are collecting quality results for an item, the system verifies that the item exists in the Oracle Inventory item master. Similarly, the system verifies that suppliers and customers exist in Oracle Purchasing and Oracle Order Management as you collect supplier and customer data. Such data integrity does not exist in a quality database that is not integrated with your key business systems.

ISO 9000

Oracle Quality lets you collect your company's quality information and procedures to make ISO certification faster, simpler and more effective. ISO 9000 is not industry specific and is not an evaluation of a specific product or service.

It's an evaluation of the consistency in execution and maintenance of internal operation procedures that directly affect a company's ability to produce high quality products and services.

ISO 9000 requires that you fully document your business processes that ensure high quality product and service. You must then prove that you do what you've documented.

Oracle Quality helps you document and track product and process defects, non-conformances problems, and general quality issues. You can determine what quality data to collect, track, and report using user-definable collection plans. For example, you can collect quantitative information, such as defective quantities or measurements, or qualitative information, such as critical test results and defect cause codes. You can document what defects occurred, what you did with the nonconforming material, and what corrective action you took. In addition, you can attach your ISO 9000 documentation and standard operating procedures to your collection plans so that users can access these documents on-line while they're collecting quality data.

Total Quality Management

By making quality data collection a part of your standard workflow, you can distribute quality assurance responsibilities throughout your enterprise.

The most effective quality management system is one in which people in each functional area are able to define the critical quality data to collect, to take responsibility for collecting this data, and to produce meaningful output to track progress towards their quality goals.

Oracle Quality is a enterprise-wide repository for gathering and storing quality information. It helps enforce quality control and maximizes your quality tracking efficiency by integrating directly with Oracle Applications data and transactions.

Oracle Quality accommodates dynamic business needs by letting you control when and where to collect data in your supply chain. Oracle Quality's flexible architecture easily adapts to support your ever-changing TQM requirements.

Overview of Oracle Quality

Oracle Quality is an integrated quality management application designed to support manufacturers in the pursuit of total quality management (TQM), zero defects, continuous process improvement (CPI), and ISO 9000 certification. It is designed to support the diverse data collection needs of discrete, repetitive, assemble-to-order, and batch process manufacturers. Oracle Quality helps you manage and distribute critical quality information throughout your organization.

Oracle Quality can help do all of the following:

Actions and Alerts

You can designate that specific actions be taken based on the quality results that you collect. You can have Oracle Quality issue alerts and electronic notifications, as well as place jobs, repetitive schedules, items, suppliers, and purchase order lines on hold. For example, you can send an electronic mail notification to a given user or group of users, or put a job on hold when a critical measurement is outside the upper and lower specification limits. You also can associate workflows that you create in Oracle Workflow with Quality actions, and specify that they are automatically initiated based on quality results.

You can define action rules and related actions for any collection element, and copy them to any collection plan containing the collection element. You also can define action rules for collection elements within collection plans, which makes the action rule(s) applicable only when the collection element is used within that plan.

For information on how to set up actions and alerts, see: Defining Collection Element Actions and Defining Collection Plan Element Actions.

Collection Plans

Collection plans are similar to test or inspection plans. They contain the collection elements that represent the specific data that you want to collect and report on. Collection plans can include collection elements that collect data on defect types, symptoms, causes, actions, critical measurements, or environmental characteristics, as well as reference information such as item, lot number, serial number, operation, department, subinventory, supplier and customer. You also can specify target values and limits for collection plan elements, and mandate that certain actions be taken, based on the quality results entered. For example, you can specify that an electronic mail notification be sent when a temperature reaches a certain level.

For information on how to set up and use Collection Plans, see the section on Collection Plans, beginning with: Overview of Collection Plans.

Specifications

In Oracle Quality, you can define specifications for key characteristics of the products that you produce or the material that you receive from suppliers. Specification describe the requirements of a product.

You can create specifications for items or categories of items by assigning them a group of collection elements and their specification limits. You can also create supplier specifications for items that you receive from specific suppliers. Further, you can create customer specifications specific to the product standards expected by customers. These three types of specifications help ensure that the goods you produce conform to your quality engineering standards and to your customers' quality standards.

For information on how to set up and use specifications, see the section on Specifications, beginning with: Overview of Specifications.

Collection Elements

To be able to collect quality data using Oracle Quality, you need to set up a data collection structure referred to as a "collection plan." Collection plans consist of "collection elements," which are the basic building blocks of collection plans, and determine the data the plan will collect and report. You can define an unlimited number of collection elements for attributes such as defect, disposition, severity, cause, pass/fail results, or for variables such as voltage, resistance, temperature, or acidity. For each collection element that you create, you can specify a list of acceptable values or specification limits such as target value and upper and lower limits.

For information on how to set up and use collection elements, see the section on Collection Elements, beginning with: Overview of Collection Elements.

Data Collection Options

You can enter results into the quality data repository:

You can enter quality results directly at any time. For example, a quality engineer can enter lot sampling results for a collection plan independent of the operator who enters the job completion transaction. The quality engineer can also query and update the quality results that the operator initiated.

If you collect quality data during transactions, you can optionally define quality collection triggers to determine which collection plan to use for a given transaction. For example, you can indicate that you want to use a collection plan called First Pass Yield when entering move transactions for a particular assembly item. Thus, you can control when and where in the transaction process to collect quality data. By making quality data collection a part of the standard workflow, you can distribute quality assurance responsibilities throughout your organization.

You can use Collection Import to import quality data from external systems into the quality data repository. For example, you can import data from sources such as test equipment and gauges. Imported data is validated according to validation rules of the collection plan. Invalid entries are marked so that you can correct and resubmit them. This maintains the integrity of the quality data repository by rejecting invalid item numbers, supplier numbers, and defect codes. The actions that you defined in the collection plan, such as electronic mail notifications, are triggered based on the incoming data.

Query, Report, and Export Data

Oracle Quality provides you with powerful inquiries that enable you to quickly find quality results. You can define your own selection criteria. For example, you can view failure results that are specific to item A54888 and that occurred at operation 10 during May of last year.

You can view quality results using on-line, ad hoc queries and through printed reports. You can also chart your results using trend charts, Pareto charts, control charts, and histograms.

You can save the settings you use to create charts, descriptive statistic views, and custom reports. For example, you can create a Pareto chart that graphically illustrates the top failures for all assemblies on a specific production line. You can then save the settings for this chart. Later, after collecting additional data about failures occurring on this production line, you can re-chart your results.

Furthermore, you can copy the settings that you save for a (source) chart, descriptive statistic view, or custom report to a destination chart, descriptive statistic view, or custom report. Copying setting in this manner allows you to view the same subset of data in different ways. See: Copy Settings.

You can export information for further analysis. Direct database access is facilitated by database views. See: Exporting Quality Results and Collection Plan and Import Results Database Views.

You can also access data directly from the quality data repository with products such as Oracle Discoverer.

Additional Information: See also Oracle E-Business Suite Support Implications for Discoverer 11gR1, My Oracle Support Knowledge Document Doc ID 2277369.1.

Track and Monitor Quality Results

You can use Oracle Quality to track and monitor quality results. You can, for example use Oracle Quality to do all of the following:

Track First Article Inspection Defects

You can use Oracle Quality to track quality results from first article inspections. If you are only interested in knowing that a part is defective and the date that it was determined to be defective, you can create your collection plan accordingly. If you choose, you can create an alert action that sends the buyer of a part an electronic mail notification each time one of their parts is found to be defective.

Track Serial Controlled Items

You can monitor serial controlled assemblies, subassemblies, and components by creating and using collection plans to do the following:

For example, you can create a collection plan that is used to collect component item, serial number, test date, test type, and test result data.

See: Viewing Quality Results by Serial Number

Use serial genealogy to track the transaction and multilevel composition history of any serial-controlled item from receipt through work in process and inventory to your customer sale. Using the Genealogy window, Quality Collections tab, you can view any quality collection plans associated with the item. See: Viewing Serial Genealogy, Oracle Inventory User's Guide.

Track Lot Controlled Items

You can monitor lot controlled assemblies, subassemblies, component, batches, and processes by creating and using collection plans to:

See: Viewing Quality Results by Lot Number

Use lot genealogy to view the relationship between lots and provide lot traceability that results from inventory transactions. Using the Genealogy window, Quality Collections tab, you can view any quality collection plans associated with the item. See: Viewing Lot Genealogy, Oracle Inventory User's Guide.

Analyze Product Defects Using Charts and Reports

You can create a variety of charts using Oracle Quality. You can also create custom reports.

Pareto Charts

You can summarize and chart product defects using Pareto's law to focus on the most often occurring defects. For example, you can create a Product Defects collection plan containing collection elements like defect code and quantity defective, as well as reference information collection elements like item, department, and supplier. You can use this collection plan to collect detailed results for each failed inspection. Once results are collected, you can create a Pareto chart showing the quantity of failed inspections by defect code, department, item category, and so on. See: Pareto Charts.

Histograms

You can use histogram to provide a graphic summary of variation in a set of data. Histograms are useful in the study of process capability because they graphically display the shape, location, and scatter of quality results data. See: Histograms.

Trend Charts

You can use trend charts to analyze data collected over a period of time. For example, you can create a Glazing Process collection plan to collect process quality variables such as oven temperature and voltage from a glazing process. You can use this collection plan to record five readings at random times during each shift. Once the results are collected, you can create a trend chart to graphically display the results of temperature or voltage. See: Trend Charts.

Control Charts

You can use control charts to determine whether process stability has been upset by special or assignable causes. You can create the following types of control charts in Oracle Quality:

See: Control Charts.

Custom Reports

Using the Quality Results ReportWriter, you can create a variety of custom reports to list and summarize results. For example, if you have created and collected results using a collection plan that contains collection elements like item, job, job quantity, quantity completed, quantity scrapped, and inspection results, you can create a report that summarizes your inspection results as well as a report that uses these same results to show yield (quantity complete versus job quantity) by job, by item, or by item category. See: Using the Quality Results ReportWriter.

Identify Nonconformances and Implement Corrective Actions

Oracle Quality provides a set of collection plan templates that enable suppliers or internal personnel to log quality nonconformances prior to receipt of purchased goods, during receipt, or during the manufacturing process. A nonconformance plan can initiate a disposition, which assigns the nonconformance to specific individuals for action and final resolution. You can use a corrective action request (CAR) to identify problems in the quality system, such as a nonconformance, an audit observation, or a finding. The CAR lifecycle includes problem identification, corrective actions, and actions that prevent recurrence of the problem. For more information about implementing a nonconformance, disposition, and corrective action request system, see the Oracle Quality Implementation Guide.

Audit Your Quality Management System

You can conduct audits of a potential supplier, an active supplier, or your own quality management system using seeded collection plan templates. Use the audit collection plans to generate corrective action requests, too, if desired. Audits can help ensure that you and your suppliers meet quality standards, such as ISO 9000 (see: ISO 9000 Compliance). For more information about implementing audits, see the Oracle Quality Implementation Guide.

Quality Business Flow Diagram

The following diagram illustrates the flow of quality information within a business using Oracle Quality:

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Quality Process Flow Diagram

The entire process of defining data collection components, collecting, reporting, and analyzing data is summarized by the following diagram:

Quality Process Flow Diagram

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