Information Technology Reference
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quality operating system. A solid quality system can provide the means through
which the DFSS project will sustain its long-term gains. Quality system certifications
are becoming a customer requirement and a trend in many industries. The verify and
validate phase of identify, conceptualize, optimize, and verify/validate (ICOV) DFSS
algorithm requires that a solid quality system be employed in the DFSS project area.
The quality system objective is to achieve customer satisfaction by preventing
nonconformity at all developmental stages. A quality system is the company's agreed
upon method of doing business. It is not to be confused with a set of documents that
is meant to satisfy an outside auditing organization (i.e., ISO 9000). That is, a quality
system represents the actions not the written words of a company. The elements of an
effective quality system include a quality mission statement, management reviews,
company structure, planning, design control, data control, purchasing quality-related
functions (e.g., supplier evaluation and incoming inspection), structure for trace-
ability, process control, process monitoring and operator training, capability studies,
measurement system analysis (MSA), audit functions, inspection and testing, soft-
ware, statistical analysis, standards, and so on.
Two functions are needed: “assurance” and “control.” Both can be assumed by
different members of the team or outsourced to the respective concerned departments.
In software, the “control” function is different from the “assurance” function.
Software quality assurance is the function of software quality that assures that the
standards, processes, and procedures are appropriate for the project and are imple-
mented correctly. Software quality assurance consists of a means of monitoring the
software development processes and methods used to ensure quality. The methods
by which this is accomplished are many and varied and may include ensuring con-
formance to one or more standards, such as ISO 9000 or capability maturity model
integration (CMMI). However, software quality control is the function of software
quality that checks that the project follows its standards processes and procedures
and that the software DFSS project produces the required internal and external (de-
liverable) products. These terms seem similar, but a simple example highlights the
fundamental difference. Consider a software project that includes requirements, user
interface design, and an structured query language (SQL) database implementation.
The DFSS team would produce a quality plan that would specify any standards,
processes, and procedures that apply to the example project. These might include, for
example, IEEE X specification layout (for the requirements), Motif style guide A (for
the user interface design), and Open SQL standards (for the SQL implementation).
All standards processes and procedures that should be followed are identified and
documented in the quality plan; this is done by the assurance function.
When the requirements are produced, the team would ensure that the requirements,
did infact, follow the documented standard (in this case, IEEE X). The same task, by
team quality control function, would be undertaken for the user interface design and
the SQL implementation; that is, they both followed the standard identified by the
assurance function. Later, this function of the team could make audits to verify that
IEEE X and not IEEE A indeed was used as the requirements standard. In this way,
a difference between correctly implemented by the assurance function followed by a
control function clearly can be drawn.
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