Although the need to inspect the product indicates the organization's inability to produce a good product. Inspection activities may indicate a flaw in the design of the business process meaning quality assurance process is not working as it should. But we live in a real world and projects are done by real people who does make mistakes. That's why inspections are introduced, to minimize the chance of a faulty or flawed deliverable getting to the customer.
In my view inspections do add value. How often, depends upon integrity of the quality assurance process. Saving Changes...
Dileep SankarProject Engineer| Mechon Trading and ContractingDoha, Qatar
I'd certainly go with the fact that inspection is essential for a project/product to be successful. and hence is certainly a value added process. As many have already pointed out, the projects are performed by real people, and it is the nature of humankind to make mistakes.
Errors may occur from anybody at any stage, and these can be identified only through implementing inspections. A good PM will know when and where to perform the inspection among the numerous activities in his/her project, and thus can control the outcome positively, without affecting the stakeholders as well as the product.
This substantiates that inspections have their value, and without inspections the probability of failure of a project is high. Saving Changes...
Joseph PanganSenior Principal Consultant| Genpact PhilippinesAngeles City, Philippines, Philippines
Interesting... Inspections is value added to the improvement of a process in its initial iterations until the process reaches its highest acceptable efficiency and consistency where inspection will no longer be required and the process becoming lean. Reaching that highest acceptable efficiency and consistency could take time or even years though. With the temporary nature of projects, projects will not get to the point where inspection will no longer be required. In projects, when you find defects, often, you buy time to solve the defects and not necessarily change the process due to the constraints in time.
Inspection does not add value to a product though. The product is predetermined. The desired output. Inspection is performed to check if the same predetermined/desired product is achieved. The output will always be the predetermined/desired product, or perhaps, worse. Saving Changes...
Also related to the topic of waste you can look for the japanese concept of: "Muda".
Finally had a chance to look into this fool-proofing. It looks like poka yoke relies on two things:
1. The product has fool-proofing features built into it
2. The product's fool-proofing features forces a certain, hopefully better, user behaviour
The first item implies that you have to include fool-proofing features in your product's design. These are not functional features so they don't add value to the product. For example, the fact I have to depress the clutch in my Corolla before I can start it does not make my car more valuable.
The second item forces changes in the user's behaviour. Does this behaviour change add value to the product? I don't think so. It does, however add "value" to the user by forcing a better behaviour. Saving Changes...
Inspections are an important part of process & product improvement. Measurements in every inspections & keeping track of every measurement in inspections are to be followed religiously. Saving Changes...
Roddney HackstallSr. Project Manager | Canopy Partners El Paso, Tx, United States
Generating some great discussion here. Please keep it coming. So far I have been learning from this awesome platform and the vast experiences and opinions of all of you professionals. Thanks Saving Changes...
It depends. Based on the nature, complexity and necessity of the project and/or tasks, you may need to have inspections. The value that inspection can add has to do with quality and reason of inspection. Saving Changes...
Sromon DasSenior Project Manager| Mara ConsultingHalifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
My perspective from a services industry standpoint- inspection is useful in measuring and controlling quality; if we look at "value added" as something the customer is willing to pay for, then it probably wouldn't be so, as the customer only cares about the end result and not the number of times a product or service has been inspected for quality. I personally see inspection as rework, and hence a "waste". I feel efforts should be made to move from quality by inspection to quality by design, but in a real world you probably cannot eliminate inspection altogether. Saving Changes...
Hello,
Inspections don't add any value (features, physical modifications) to the product.
Is it required? -- It depends; if the cost of inspection is less than the cost of avoiding inspection (by poka yoke, better design of process & product, liabilities of selling a defective product), then one may decide to go with inspection.
In many manufacturing companies the product & process are designed to avoid inspection of 100% of the produces. The samples are taken at predefined intervals for inspection. Saving Changes...
Mansoor MustafaSenior PM| Government DepartmentRawalpindi Punjab, Pakistan
Thanks for sharing info Diogo
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1 reply by Diogo Simoes
Jan 02, 2018 7:00 PM
Diogo Simoes
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You're welcome Mansoor.
I just stated my opinion. Unfortunately sometimes people just agree with the posts without thinking about the subject.
