The Adequacy of an Organisation's Measurement System in Quality Management

This article focuses on assessing the adequacy of an organisation's measurement system, using commonly used indicators of the performance and of the quality of production processes - recording the frequency of occurrence of certain types of errors. Through the systematic monitoring of data about quality from a specific company, the relevance of particular indicators was reviewed with regards to their effectiveness and the economic aspect of the monitoring and measurement. Possibilities for reducing data with regard to maintenance, or minimally reducing their reliability, were assessed using a factor analysis. Discrete indicators of quality were examined through evaluating process outputs. Also reviewed was the correlation structure of the frequency of specific errors. A series of factor analysis procedures was carried out experimentally with the objective to (1) assess the suitability of variables for factor analysis, (2) determine the degree of variability explained by a particular mathematic model, and (3) reveal the degree of coverage of the total number of errors by the specific variables. The results based on the example of a specific production organisation prove that the possibilities to improve the adequacy of a measurement system are significant. From the originally monitored 47 errors, 27 of the most frequent were identified, which accounts for 97% of all errors. Through factor analysis, these 27 types of errors were merged into just 11 categories of errors, with the reliability of the results maintained at 80%. The results contribute to a broader professional discussion focused on better decision-making in indicator selecting.