Manufacturing Fundamentals Student Workbook | Unit 5: Quality Assurance (Second Edition) (Volume 5)

The Manufacturing Fundamentals program introduces and develops the student’s production knowledge/skills sets applicable to entry-level production technician jobs in the advanced manufacturing industry’s 14 sub-industries and prepares the student to sit for the Manufacturing Skill Standards Council (MSSC) Certified Production Technician (CPT) assessments. The complete Manufacturing Fundamentals program is comprised of the following units:

• Unit 1: Employability Skills
• Unit 2: Safety Awareness
• Unit 3: Production and Processes
• Unit 4: Maintenance Awareness
• Unit 5: Quality Assurance

Quality assurance is an integral part of product safety, compliance, use, and the production process. To ensure continued production of high-quality products (i.e., those products that meet the needs of the customer), every production technician must be well versed in modern quality methods and standards. This means that you must:

• understand what quality means
• know how to determine if quality standards are met
• know the steps to take/tools to use to produce and maintain a quality product.

This unit provides you with the foundational quality assurance knowledge/skill sets pertaining to production manufacturing. By developing these sets, you will become more productive and improve your ability to move up the production-workforce career ladder. The unit also prepares you to sit for the “Quality Assurance” assessment portion of the MSSC Production Technician certification examination.

Quality assurance is every production technician’s responsibility. You must understand and put into practice quality assurance knowledge/skill sets vital to your company’s ability to compete successfully in the global marketplace. These sets are addressed in Unit 5, which is comprised of the following modules:

• Module 1: Introduction to Quality Management
• Module 2: Quality Measuring Process
• Module 3: Quality Improvement and Assessment
• Module 4: SixSigma (from Unit 3)
• Module 5: Lean Manufacturing (from Unit 3)
• Module 6: Problem Solving

Two areas of Quality (Lean Manufacturing and SixSigma) were covered in Unit 3-Production, since they closely relate to the production processes. All training modules were developed to enhance your current knowledge of the subject matter. Each module is supplied with discussion items, case studies, and/or exercises to enhance your learning experience.