Continuously Strengthening R&D Quality Awareness

To achieve sustainable development, quality must always be placed first in research and development activities. In recent years, with the increasing diversity and differentiation of customer demands, as well as the fluctuating changes in the upstream and downstream industries, the iteration speed of R&D of products has become faster, bringing new challenges to the control of R&D quality.

In addition to managing the R&D cycle of new products, improving professional technical capabilities, and strengthening the training of engineers, enhancing the R&D quality awareness of engineers is still a very important task.

When it comes to the quality of R&D, we can still revisit the four basic principles of quality by Philip B. Crosby, who is known as the“greatest quality leader”of modern times, the“father of zero defects”, and the“world quality man”.

(1) Quality = Compliance with Requirements

You must fully understand your design task and all requirements. If you don't fully understand the customer's needs, it's like not really understanding your task. In this case, how do you proceed with your design work and how do you ensure that the product you develop complies with customer requirements?

(2) System = Prevention

To achieve quality goals, it is necessary to use systematic design tools, establish a systematic quality consciousness, carry out systematic program selection and comprehensive implementation to prevent design quality problems.

(3) Work Standard = Zero Defects

There may be multiple work methods and technical paths, but there is only one work standard, which is zero defects. Any method and path that cannot achieve zero defects should be discarded as soon as possible. Even the slightest indication of a defect should be highly valued and closed-loop processed. You cannot assume that some problems are “unavoidable”.

(4) Measurement Standards = Cost of Noncompliance

Any defects or quality issues of the product may lead to significant costs for us. We do not want any R&D engineers to have quality problems due to a lack of quality awareness or inadequate implementation.

There is another quote in Crosby's quality core principle, which is “do it right the first time”. This actually tells us how to complete every development task most efficiently and with the highest quality assurance, and make our efforts bring business value.

We need every engineer to prioritize quality and strive to do things right the first time.