02-20-2015, 05:14 AM
"Quality" is too vague. Adding fancy parts to a battle rifle increases costs but may not improve real world use, some might even degrade reliability, e.g., a target chamber for field use could cause extraction problems but would be critical in a target rifle.
Factor in the purpose of the build including where it will be used e.g., reliability, accuracy, range vs hunting vs a battlefield. Then look at the actual cost to of meeting the intended application.
Sample size, one off builds are not easily charted and may not represent overall production quality. This sort of chart is more applicable to production item from a factory.
Yield, this one is tricky, if you take sample of production, say ten items out of a thousand, depending on how homogeneous production quality is, out of that thousand some will far exceed requirements and other may be way below requirements. The larger the sample size the more you will know how homogeneous a given lot will be. This is how tester A raves about the latest firearm from Acme Productions and tester B declares the new Acme Productions a POS, they might both be correct.
As far as having a quality program goes, it's all about implementation. A fantastic QA manual and testing program that is not used is worthless. There are production facilities that do excellent work without a written program, quality work is just, "What they do."
Factor in the purpose of the build including where it will be used e.g., reliability, accuracy, range vs hunting vs a battlefield. Then look at the actual cost to of meeting the intended application.
Sample size, one off builds are not easily charted and may not represent overall production quality. This sort of chart is more applicable to production item from a factory.
Yield, this one is tricky, if you take sample of production, say ten items out of a thousand, depending on how homogeneous production quality is, out of that thousand some will far exceed requirements and other may be way below requirements. The larger the sample size the more you will know how homogeneous a given lot will be. This is how tester A raves about the latest firearm from Acme Productions and tester B declares the new Acme Productions a POS, they might both be correct.
As far as having a quality program goes, it's all about implementation. A fantastic QA manual and testing program that is not used is worthless. There are production facilities that do excellent work without a written program, quality work is just, "What they do."