Aerospace is acknowledged to be among the most highly regulated industries in the world. Like other critical industries, such as nuclear, it is certainly one in which recalls are not an option as any fault could be discovered too late to prevent serious repercussions.

Consequently, there is a lot of emphasis on quality with accreditation to internationally recognized standards, such as AS9100 and Nadcap, expected of any company that has a role in the supply chain.

Who better, then, to share their quality expertise?

PRI views World Quality Day as a great opportunity to highlight the value that quality brings to any highly regulated industry. Too often, quality is viewed as an expense rather than an asset: it is vital that organisations – irrespective of sector or location – recognise the importance of quality.

To raise the profile of quality, PRI is using the occasion of World Quality Day to remind the aerospace engineering workforce not to take quality for granted and to provide a resource for quality experts in any field to utilise in their efforts to demonstrate the value of quality to their management and colleagues.

Throughout World Quality Week, a different facet of quality will be reviewed each day. The goal is to encourage the industry to review their own activities and identify opportunities for improvement. An example is below:

Clean Up This Mess...

The Site Manager is doing his daily inspection of the facility. As he walks around, he narrowly avoids slipping in a puddle of water on the floor. He calls over the nearest staff person and, pointing to the water, says "Clean up this mess! I nearly fell over - it’s dangerous!" and continues his tour of the site.

The following day, as he’s walking through the same part of the building, he slips over because there is water on the floor. Spotting the same member of staff, he calls "Hey! Didn’t I tell you to clear that up? You’re in big trouble, buddy - I just fell over!"

The employee points to a pipe running the length of the ceiling and explains "I did clean it up yesterday but there is a leak in this pipe so however much I mop the floor, there’s still water on it. It’s real strange because that pipe is quite new."

The Site Manager, realizing that only immediate corrective action had been completed, determined to get to the root cause of the problem.
When he gets back to his office, he calls the Maintenance Manager. The Maintenance Manager checks through the records and reports that the pipe is only a few months old, but he’s not surprised it’s leaking because it wasn’t the one he wanted to order. The Purchasing Manager had vetoed his preferred pipe as being too expensive.

The Site Manager calls the Purchasing Manager and tells him off, asking "Why did you make the Maintenance Manager buy a sub-standard pipe? Now it needs to be replaced, which will cost more!"

"But Sir," came the response, "any orders over a certain amount have to be run past you and you refused to authorize the first request as it was just too much money to pay for a pipe."

"Ah," thought the Site Manager, "now what?"

Joe Pinto, PRI’s Vice President & COO explains: "From reviewing the daily activities of the company to see if ‘the way we’ve always done things’ is actually the best way, to evaluating communication skills and their impact on quality, PRI has compiled some light-hearted but poignant reminders of the importance of quality in highly regulated industries to stimulate discussion and raise the profile of quality."

To receive more details, please contact PRI@PRIEurope.org.uk