A proposal for integrating production control and quality control

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a practical proposal for integrating production control (PC) and quality control (QC) at the shop floor level.Design/methodology/approach – The proposed method is based on three principles which relate PC and QC at the shop floor level. The proposal is applied successfully at the world's largest pencil factory.Findings – The results show that the proposed method contributes to improve four performance indicators related to PC and QC at the company studied: increase the average throughput in about 28.9 per cent; reduce the average value of work in process (WIP) in about 35.6 per cent, reduce the average lead time by about 45.4 per cent, and reduce the average defect rate by about 71.4 per cent.Research limitations/implications – The proposal (mainly because of principle III) is developed to be applied in repetitive production (RP) systems, i.e. environments characterized by low production volume and low product variety.Practical implications – Some practica...

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