Quality control problems?

Although in a different industry completely, I have had some experience of "Quality control" and "sampling" - that is, taking an occasional sample of the product of a workflow to see if it meets the required standards.  In our case we did a 10% sample.  If that was OK, the work was passed.  If it threw up any doubt, the sample size was widened and if that threw up doubts, the whole thing was tested.

It was a system that was good enough when the background environment acknowledged and accepted an "acceptable level of shortcomings" in a flow of work.  If 90% was OK then the Inspectorate were happy.

The industry (remaining nameless as is the business concerned) could tolerate 10% failure rate as it was neither life nor system critical, nor did people buy the end product - it was a recording/retrieval and data capture function.

The point of this little tale is that I hope Hornby are not borrowing this philosophy or system to use in their industry where even 5% or 2% of the output cannot afford to be wrong if you expect repeat business!!  The problem, of course, is that an inspection of EVERY model adds to the price and we are moaning about prices already……..

That reminds me of the story of a Japanese engineering company in the North of England who got an order for some 100 components.  The buyer had stated "maximum + or - 10% faulty".  The Japanese company supplied only 90 and, when asked why, they answered that they were now making the 10 faulty ones as requested !!!

[user=6]Petermac[/user] wrote:

That reminds me of the story of a Japanese engineering company in the North of England who got an order for some 100 components.  The buyer had stated "maximum + or - 10% faulty".  The Japanese company supplied only 90 and, when asked why, they answered that they were now making the 10 faulty ones as requested !!!