QRQC: How to Master Quick Response Quality Control

Speed and responsiveness can never be underestimated in manufacturing. That’s why an approach that emphasizes acting and adapting quickly, with decision-making grounded in facts and data, has risen in prominence across all industry sectors.

We’re talking about the Quick Response Quality Control (QRQC) method, rooted in Kaizen, the Japanese continuous improvement philosophy, and Lean management principles.

QRQC was developed in the 1990s by a design engineer at automaker Nissan. He noticed that there was often a delay in solving quality problems. Problems would be routed up a company hierarchy for solution decision-making. He conceived that businesses should empower those up close to the problem to immediately contain and address them.

The QRQC method then quickly spread to France’s automotive and aerospace industries. Today, it is widely used across all manufacturing sectors to improve quality and performance.

What is Quick Response Quality Control (QRQC)?

QRQC is an effective, systematic project management approach for teams to proactively solve quality issues in real-time, often right on the plant floor. Speed is key in QRQC and it emphasizes stakeholders identifying, assessing and containing issues swiftly, followed by implementing lasting solutions and standardized best practices to prevent future occurrences.

The agile method focuses on structured processes and roles, communication and team work, and continuous improvement to enhance performance and product quality. With the QRQC method, it’s simple for teams to work collaboratively to achieve continuous, incremental quality improvements every day.

Examples of Applications of QRQC

The QRQC method can be applied across all sectors, whether it’s:

CPG: e.g. to overcome a foreign material contamination from a machine malfunction that could lead to product recalls.
Aerospace: e.g. to prevent dimensional inaccuracies from improperly calibrated tools that could lead to deviation from specifications and compromise safety in the production process.
Electronics: e.g. to stop product component failures due to mechanical stress during product testing that could lead to dissatisfied customers.

QRQC Methodology & Structure

The key elements of a QRQC structure are:

Problem Detection: Immediately spot when deviations from standards or malfunctions happen, often right on the plant floor.
Team Formation and Communication: Define the quality problem and communicate with a group of multidisciplinary team members. Loop in co-workers who can bring useful expertise and perspectives to the problem-solving task at hand.
Problem Assessment: Understand what you’re dealing with. Conduct a root cause analysis and assess the seriousness of the issue and its potential impact on quality.
Escalation Process: While a QRQC approach largely supports frontline employee autonomy, sometimes the quality problems will be complex, recurring, or require significant resources. In these cases, escalate the issue to a more senior decision-maker. The business might decide to implement a more in-depth method like PDCA to choose the best path to resolution in their management system.
Corrective Actions Implementation: Take immediate countermeasures to contain the quality problem. This might look like discarding any non-compliant products so they don’t get shipped out to customers or halting a production line, depending on the problem’s severity. With the quality problem quickly contained, businesses can then focus on introducing solutions that fully resolve the problem and keep it from coming back.
Post-Implementation Checkup: Once countermeasures have been introduced, follow up and check that the solution did indeed rectify the problem. This step helps prevent the same quality problem from happening twice.
Key Learnings Documentation and Dissemination: Document key lessons learned. Distribute them among relevant teams. Make sure a wider group can understand how to stop recurrence of similar occurrences in the future.
Standardization: In a similar vein, update or develop new standard operating procedures (SOPs) based on key learnings and current best practices. This supports lasting quality improvements.

QRQC Tools and Techniques

Having the right tools and techniques in place to follow the QRQC grid allows everything to go smoother and quicker.

Let’s look at some examples of tools and techniques:

The 5 Whys: this is one of the simplest root cause analysis exercises businesses can use if the quality issue is relatively straightforward (e.g. doesn’t require advanced statistics). First, businesses look at a quality problem statement and ask why it occurred. With the answer to the first question in hand, they then ask why that happened. In total, the process gets repeated five times. This goes beyond gathering surface-level insights and gets businesses to the true root cause.

Ishikawa, or the Fishbone Diagram: this is a visual method for root cause analysis that organizes cause-and-effect relationships into categories. Over time, it got the nickname the fishbone diagram because the visual resembles a fish skeleton laid on its side, with the problem to be solved at the mouth, and each of the bones feeding into the spine of the fish representing a category of potential contributors to the quality problem. Teams carry out cause brainstorming for each category. This visual method can support the 5 Whys technique for most effective root cause analysis.

Gemba Walk: this is a Lean tool that involves management walking the plant floor to observe processes firsthand, identify quality issues and discuss them with frontline operators. The foundation of this tool is Sen Gen Shugi, or the “three realities” principle, which emphasizes the importance of:

Gemba (“the real place” i.e. firsthand experience)
Genbutsu (“the real parts” i.e. direct, up-close engagement with parts and products)
Genjitsu (“the real facts” i.e. ensuring solutions are based on data and not assumptions).

Simple but highly effective, businesses should consider using digital checklists (e.g. Gemba walk checklists), audits (e.g. layer process audits (LPAs)) and reports (e.g. A3 reports). This way, they don’t waste employee time and talent on manual administration. Digital Excel templates allow teams to easily alter checklists, audits and reports to their specific needs.

Advantages of the QRQC Method

When the right tools and techniques are supporting QRQC, the method is easy for employees to get trained on and use and can be standardized and scaled across the business.

QRQC emphasizes speed, but not at the expense of accuracy. The method relies on data-driven decision making.

The advantages of QRQC are plentiful. When you can contain and resolve quality issues swiftly and more effectively, the results show through in:

Product quality
Frontline team engagement in continuous improvement
Efficiency and productivity e.g. reduced downtime
Reduced waste e.g. fewer recalled products
Higher customer satisfaction levels
Greater resilience and adaptability

Steps to Implement QRQC

At the outset, businesses need to consider who’s going to be part of the team involved in the QRQC, train those team members, and define clear roles and responsibilities for everyone.

Another consideration is the implementation of clear, repeatable procedures for quality issue detection, analysis, and resolution. Without this, the team could all be approaching quality problems differently.

Managers should decide on an escalation process to follow if a quality issue is too complex to be solved directly on the plant floor.

Teams should hold daily huddles to regularly discuss quality problems, solutions and statuses.

Key Management Activities to Support a QRQC Process

For businesses looking to use a QRQC system, quality management professionals and project managers should consider the following factors during set-up:

Staff training: Help team members feel comfortable following the approach and using the tools and techniques.
Small starts: Prove initial success, then expand.
Reinforce consistency: Consistency is key. QRQC is most successful when following a consistent process and roles, daily.
Celebrate wins: Celebrate the effectiveness of QRQC across the business – it boosts morale and keeps employees engaged in continuous improvement.

Final Thoughts

What business doesn’t want to swiftly problem-solve and improve quality daily?

In dynamic manufacturing environments, such as where changes frequently happen or there’s high product variety, its principles of speed and responsiveness make the QRQC grid key to a successful lean management strategy.