How Do I Know It's Safe?

If you’re working in a Product based company, it is imperative that the people who are involved in the development of the product will always think on one topic - How can I make sure always our product is working?

Especially, if you are working in a Medical Device Product company you always think one notch above what usually other things – i.e. How to comply with the Regulatory Standards before releasing the product to the market, as the complies to the regulatory standards confirms the safety of the product to the users.

What the consumers think before they buy any product………? Have we ever thought like this? Well, if you are not really well aware of the facts what the customer’s think….I recommend you to go though the below article…….I am sure after reading this article, we will think in a different way!

Here it goes ……………………

We are a product-oriented society. Day after day, we buy products for our homes and offices. Our lives are built around the comfort that they provide, so the safety of these products is terribly important to us.

As consumers, we are at the mercy of our suppliers. Should I buy this product? How do I know it's safe? As suppliers, we recognize the obligation to our customers and the need to convey assurance as we put our products on the market.

Product safety consciousness evolved over the entire 20th century. Underwriters Laboratories (UL) was formed in 1894 to establish de facto safety standards and test products to those standards. The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) was established in 1898 to recommend standards for safety and other matters.

Product manufacturers began implementing those standards. Retailers started to demand more proof of the safety of the products they sold. Consumers learned to look for symbols certifying that the product designs had been tested and validated for safety. Last, but most powerful, governments began to legislate safety standards.

Want to Continue……click the below link

http://www.evaluationengineering.com/archive/articles/1199safe.htm

An over review of Quality

Here, I am just trying to give glimpse about “how the quality” movement started. Through, this article I am trying to establish the connection with the roots of quality and the present situation. Hope this article serves the purpose.....(Courtesy - ASQ)

The quality movement can trace its roots back to medieval Europe, where craftsmen began organizing into unions called guilds in the late 13th century.

Until the early 19th century, manufacturing in the industrialized world tended to follow this craftsmanship model. The factory system, with its emphasis on product inspection, started in Great Britain in the mid-1750s and grew into the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s.

In the early 20th century, manufacturers began to include quality processes in quality practices.

After the United States entered World War II, quality became a critical component of the war effort: Bullets manufactured in one state, for example, had to work consistently in rifles made in another. The armed forces initially inspected virtually every unit of product; then to simplify and speed up this process without compromising safety, the military began to use sampling techniques for inspection, aided by the publication of military-specification standards and training courses in Walter Shewhart’s statistical process control techniques.

The birth of total quality in the United States came as a direct response to the quality revolution in Japan following World War II. The Japanese welcomed the input of Americans Joseph M. Juran and W. Edwards Deming and rather than concentrating on inspection, focused on improving all organizational processes through the people who used them.

By the 1970s, U.S. industrial sectors such as automobiles and electronics had been broadsided by Japan’s high-quality competition. The U.S. response, emphasizing not only statistics but approaches that embraced the entire organization, became known as total quality management (TQM).

By the last decade of the 20th century, TQM was considered a fad by many business leaders. But while the use of the term TQM has faded somewhat, particularly in the United States, its practices continue.

In the few years since the turn of the century, the quality movement seems to have matured beyond Total Quality. New quality systems have evolved from the foundations of Deming, Juran and the early Japanese practitioners of quality, and quality has moved beyond manufacturing into service, healthcare, education and government sectors.