What is Quality?

A lot of QA managers think producing the parts that meet the customer requirement, delight customer and satisfy customer is doing a quality job. Every MBA student or experienced engineer learn that ISO9001:2008 also stressed that customer satisfaction is important.

All stated fact are very academic and true. But, if you are the owner of business, do you want to hire QA manager that always rejected your lots and offer no solution because it is part of quality system? Yet, the QA manager is so proud of their work "rejecting your part" because he has done a Quality Job.

I bet that if you are owner, you want to fire this manager because he is hired by you to do such a fine job academically but cause your downfall, you cannot survive in the market place with this kind of attitude in your QA manager.

Then, what? Does it mean all QA manager should be a politician? Let the lot passed and find a way to explain later. The answer is also NO.

Quality means doing the right thing at the right times that sell at the right price that make your customer and operation happy at the same time.

Customer sometimes do not know what they want and the customer always demand all the best thing in the world at the lower price. Trust me, if you always beleive all customer said is right, you dig your own grave and always behind your competitor.

Customer sometimes do not know what they want, they do not know what is the right thing and they do not what is the right time to have this product. They do know the right price if there is a lot of reference for them, in other words, if you follow what most academician mindset, means there must be a lot of references, a lot of existence product or things for them to check.

Quality definition from ISO9001:2008 and many academic papers focused on customer satisfaction. To make your customer happy, you focused on what they know, you are competiting with other. You are in red ocean. There will be blood everywhere.

Yes, in theory, you are doing a quality job or in reality you are bleeding your company's blood. So, there are many ways to make customer or consumer happy. Look at how Steve Job do it, he creates the right product at the right time and consumer is crazy about it. That is what Quality manager should do. Find out what is the right product and ensure the right timing to launch it to make the customer happy.

No, you should not create a product that cannot function or a bad product. A right product may not be perfect but it allows time for your solution. Look at Applegate issue (Apple antenna causes the drop call issue). It is not a nice thing to have and every QA manager fear to have it. But, does Apple close shop and customer stop buying Iphone because of that? The judgment is there!

The Integrated Circuit (IC) or PCB (Printed Circuit Board) can be damaged by ESD event. That is the reason why in most MNC (multinational company), ESD control is requested by customers.

The most efficient method to prevent ESD is to discharge any static charges before it can touch the IC or PCB which is ESD sensitive or in S20.20 standard or IEC standard is called ESDS items. Discharge can be done safely through static dissipative that is grounded to earth.

Now this bring up an important question. What is grounding? We hear the term such as AC ground, DC ground and AC power ground and earth electrode ground.

AC ground is the ground that allow ac signal to go to the earth or any virtual earth to prevent noise but it disallow DC current. AC ground in electronic circuit normally has a capacitor between the earth and they avoid using wire since wire allow DC current to short as well. AC ground should not be used for ESD ground since it can cause noise problems to your AC ground if the static discharges through it.

What is ESD?

ESD stands for ElectroStatic Discharge. When the charge was not moving, it is static. This kind of charge is called electrostatic charge. Of course, if the charge is moving, it is a current. A moving charge carries energy from one place to another. Along the way, this energy can kill the biological cell, burnt some inorganice staff or carry some inorganice material or signal from one place to another.

So, you can imagine Electrostatic is Energy to be exploded. It explodes when it is discharging. But, how a static charge can suddenly discharge?

That is another day of story.