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We have had many contacts along our long years in Penetrant Testing and Magnetic Testing use. Within a 35-year span, we have seen more and more Quality-Assurance requirements as well as more quality-conscious people.

 

The ISO 9000:1994 series standards was an easy target for us: could you imagine that nowhere in the standards, the user/customer's needs fulfilment was written?

 

What was required was (we make a rough "translation"): “Be in line with the procedure; any discrepancy is a cause for non conformity. If the procedure is such that the manufactured product shall be defective, or does not meet the customer's needs, if one day the product is satisfactory to the customer, that means you had a deviation from the procedure, you made a mistake. NCR (non-conformity record).”

 

An NCR even if the customer was happy with the new product.

 

Fortunately, the 2000 version put at the top of the concerns the fulfilment of the needs of the user/customer. Only then it was mandatory to follow the procedure! And then it seemed acceptable that any deviation from the procedure be a cause for non-conformity.

 

Quality-Assurance for sure has led to quality improvements, to a higher safety, to longer MTBF (mean time between failures) in so many industries, even for our own cars, that we would not accept a backwards situation.

 

In the "real life" species which are very successful may go to a point where they become too huge (think of the dinosaurs) or too specialised, too dependent on one source of diet (think of the pandas and eucalyptus) or on one source of energy (think of Homo Sapiens Sapiens).

 

We may think of the Quality-Assurance development the same way: it becomes too huge (think of the mountains of documents you have to comply with), too dependent on one source of diet (standards, codes, procedures, etc.), too dependent on one source of energy (the costs involved in audits), too specialised (Quality-Assurance auditors who are... Quality-Assurance auditors exclusively, ignorant of the area they are auditing).

 

Let us emphasise this latter point.

 

Who would accept an audit of a company's finances by an auditor knowing almost nothing about the topic? Who would pay a several-day fee for such an audit? We guess the results would meet neither the expectations nor the needs of the audited company.

 

We have seen recently-- say during the last 8/10 years-- an incredible increase in the number of Quality-Assurance audits in NDT fields in many industries (nuclear, aerospace, automotive, prosthesis, etc.). Even if in some industries there is a kind of cooperation between primes which may be competitors to try and lower the total number of audits of any particular subcontractor, the trouble is that too often these audits are performed by people who do not know enough of what they audit to understand explanations.

 

As an example we may take the situation given in the MET-L-CHEK Penetrant Professor March '09 Issue. (published here by courtesy):

« It has become commonplace for businesses to be inspected or audited, as most of us know. But sometimes we question the ability of those who arrive at our door to see if we are in compliance with this, that, or the other thing. We recently had a perfect example of this. One of our customers was inspected, and the inspector examined the MSDS for our product. There he noted that one ingredient was ethoxylated alcohol. When he saw this, he assumed that it was alcohol, maybe like rubbing alcohol or maybe like whiskey, for all we know. Since the penetrant was in an open tank, he wanted to know whether the user had an air quality permit. If the tank really had alcohol in it, this might have been necessary. But ethoxylated alcohol is a totally different product, often an ingredient of soaps and detergents. It gives off no vapor, is not flammable or explosive, and is certainly not subject to air quality regulations. So what was the outcome, even after the inspector had the ingredient explained to him? He insisted on referring the problem to an engineer in his organisation. We hope that the engineer will have the knowledge to solve the problem. But we have a gripe with organisations that send out inspectors who do not have the knowledge required for them to understand what they are inspecting. »

 

Another requirement often written: a "5% accuracy" for meters calibration (meters being luxmeters, UV-A radiometers, ammeters, etc.) used in PT and MT. As per standards accuracy is a QUALITATIVE assessment, not a quantitative one. Further it is enough for an auditor to see a "less than 5% accuracy" stated by the supplier/calibration company; the auditor so often has no idea at all as how a calibration of this or that meter could be done! How could we expect a 5% accuracy when measuring a figure of 5 lux with a 1-lux resolution unit (or for that application, even if using a 0.1 lux resolution unit!)?

 

One of the troubles is that many specifications contain unattainable targets, or targets so costly to get that the questions we very often ask are:

 

- Does this or that requirement really increase Quality Assurance, or Quality?

 

- Is the cost involved worthwhile as regard to the better quality which could be got by meeting this or that requirement?

 

- Are specs writers really sure the "figures" they ask for will improve quality, or do they ask for figures just for figures, thinking more parameters with figures will make everyone more sure of the PT or MT results?

 

- Are some people asking for more parameters to be measured just to have more "causes of non-conformity" to record?

 

- Could we think that the quality of aerospace parts, or nuclear parts has increased following a path parallel to the involved Quality-Assurance costs increase?

 

Compare this situation to airlines reaction to the equation: aircraft costs/fuel costs/fuel consumption per passenger x mile.

 

If the aircraft manufacturer states that its airplane's new version will decrease consumption by one per cent while the price goes up 5%, the airlines will say "no" (in fact, they do not say "no"... but they do not buy the new version).

 

Has time to say "Enough is enough" come?

 

Enough of ever increasing requirements and costs, reducing time-for-marketing, reducing selling prices; has time come to "stabilise" the situation?

 

Quality is generally already very high. Quality-Assurance requirements and audits will improve quality only on the margin, now, if ever. So better to let subcontractors recover a lot; seeing many subcontractors of car manufacturers or aircraft manufacturers go out of business will do far more damage to the industry AND TO SAFETY AND QUALITY than letting the companies struggling for survival with less useless constraints.

AUDITORS AND EXPERTISE