Supplier Quality Assurance Management

I attended a seminar entitled “A Critical Rethink of Supplier Quality Assurance Management of Hardware Manufacturing” which was organized by Hong Kong Society for Quality (HKSQ) and Institute of Supply Management Hong Kong (ISMHK) on 26 Feb 2009. The speaker was Mr. Daniel Chan who is the Chairman of IBM Global PCB Council and shared his 20 years procurement experience.


In the beginning, Mr. Chan introduced that IBM value sequence is QCD (Quality, Cost and Delivery) but that of many US companies is CDQ. He also introduced a holistic view of “Good Quality”. There are:
i) User Interface Level (Technology, Reliability, Sustainability, etc.)
ii) User Education Level (Corp. Image, Customer Service, etc.)
iii) International Standardization / Reference (ISO 9001, UL, Intel CPU, country of origin, etc.)

After that, he discussed the product QA program included:
i) Product concept/marketing segment (e.g. positioning)
ii) Industrial design and concept
a) Design for manufacturability
b) Design for quality assurance

Overall View of Supplier Quality Assurance focused on:
i) Early prototype hardware
ii) Manufacturing
iii) Client quality feedback process, very critical process
iv) TQM (Top management responsibility)

He argued when it was NDF (No detect found), did it indicate the system was ok? No CAR, No action required? No quality problem? It may because of shift of components mean to upper or lower level of the specification. Then he mentioned 3D SPC in which time is considered, as the third axis (SPC should be feed forward (real time data) rather than feed backward system.).
“Inspection is NOT BAD!” was an interesting point realized. Many American quality gurus believed that inspection can be eliminated and only quality management system is focused. Speaker’s experience told us inspection is necessary. Inspection skill and filtration of defect parts are very critical in quality assurance program. It is because manufacturing process which is not perfect needs a good quality control program with inspection.

Then he pointed out something to learn from Japanese QA program including Lean Manufacturing, Good Relationship with Customer, and Sustainability.

Finally, he concluded that “The supplier quality assurance program is a joint quality assurance team effort between the procurement and supplier with the strong senior management commitment, effort and involvement to create a high quality awareness and operation environmental hygiene, and with the use of the appropriate professional quality tools correctly to achieve the overall quality satisfaction of the clients.”

HKSQ Chairman (Dr. Albert Tsang) presented souvenir to the speaker.