A Practical Study on How Proactive Quality Approach Can Improve System Development Process to Ensure System-Effectiveness and -Performance

This paper investigates how a proactive quality approach can aid in improving the systems development process for a young company in the water cleaning industry. We apply a mix-method gap analysis between the existing system development process, and a future desired state. The paper conducts a case study on an existing water cleaning system. Additional data complements this gap analysis, including surveys in the company, analysis of time sheets, water samples from the system, customer- and employee-interviews, work sessions with employees, and observations. Our results show that the company lacks emphasis on activities related to systems engineering. For the case, forty-nine percent of hours spent in the operational life related to non-conformances of customer requirements. The paper also illustrates how to implement the two proactive quality tools that are familiar to the employees, namely risk assessments and Quality Function Deployment. In conclusion, a proactive quality approach, with focus on the familiar tools that are easy to implement, could reduce non-conformances in system operations and improve system performance. Copyright © 2019 International Council on Systems Engineering.