The Quality Measurement Plan (QMP)

1.1 Quality assurance The responsibility of the Bell Laboratories Quality Assurance Center (QAC) is "to ensure that the communications products designed by Bell Laboratories and bought by Bell System operating companies from Western Electric Company, Incorporated will meet quality standards and will perform as the designers intended." 1 This obviates the need for each operating company to carry out its own acceptance inspection. To meet this responsibility, the QAC works with its Western Electric (WE) agents, the Quality Assurance Directorate (QAD),2 and Purchased Products Inspection (PPI) organizations. However, as stated in Ref. 1, "The primary responsibility for quality lies with the line organizations: Bell Laboratories for the quality of design and Western Electric for the quality of manufacture, installation, and repair." The quality assurance organizations conduct independent activities to assure quality to the operating companies. 215 1.2 Quality assurance audit The quality assurance organizations have two major activities. The first is to conduct quality audits where products change hands, either within WE or between WE and the operating companies. Examples are manufacturing, installation, and repair audits. The second concerns a collection of field quality monitoring activities. Examples are the Product Performance Surveys. These are designed sample surveys of reported field troubles. An audit is a highly structured system of inspections done on a sampling basis. The ingredients of an audit are: (i) sampling method, (ii) scope of inspection, (iii) quality standards, (iv) nonconformance procedures, (v) defect assessment practices, (vi) quality rating method, and (vii) report formats.