Quality 4.0—the challenging future of quality engineering

Abstract

Quality is a crucial dimension of products and processes. It is considered a competitive advantage for companies and organizations in the global market. Quality models and practices went through several evolutionary steps during modern history—from inspection to control, to quality assurance, to quality management and quality by design. These quality models follow the evolutions and revolutions in industry. It seems however, that in the last few years the quality discipline went into stagnation—very few innovative models for quality are being proposed and quality professionals in companies and organization have apparently lost their leadership positions. Also, the research for new and innovative quality models is scarce. The fourth industrial revolution is an opportunity for the quality movement to become a leading force. This poses significant challenges to the quality profession by emphasizing the need to adapt to technology innovations, to modern data analytics and to the entrepreneurships ecosystem that characterize an era of the fourth industrial revolution. In this paper, we present a framework for a quality discipline supporting the fourth industrial revolution. We propose to call it Quality 4.0. The paper also offers future directions for quality and reliability engineering that leverage opportunities derived from the fourth industrial revolution. Specifically, we discuss: (1) Quality as a data driven discipline, (2) the application of modeling and simulation for evidence-based quality engineering, (3) health monitoring and prognostics for quality, (4) integrated quality management, (5) maturity levels with respect to the fourth industrial revolution, (6) integrating innovation with quality and managing for innovation, (7) Quality 4.0 and data science, (8) integrating reliability engineering with quality engineering, and finally, (9) information quality. We are aware that these directions are still not a comprehensive picture of Quality 4.0. We claim however, that they constitute a substantial basis to update the body of knowledge and practices of the quality profession.

Keywords:

• fourth industrial revolution
• data driven
• evidence based
• modeling and simulation
• health monitoring
• integrated quality management
• maturity assessment
• information quality

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of two anonymous reviewers who provide incisive and constructive comments that helped improve the paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Avigdor Zonnenshain

Avigdor Zonnenshain is currently the Senior Research Fellow at The Gordon Center for Systems Engineering and at the Neaman Institute for National Policies Research at the Technion, Haifa, Israel. He has a PhD in Systems Engineering from the University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. Formerly, He held several major positions in the quality, reliability and systems engineering areas in RAFAEL & in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office. He is an active member of the Israel Society for Quality (ISQ). He was also the Chairman of the Standardization Committee for Management & Quality in the Standardization Institute of Israel. He is a Senior Adjunct Lecturer at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, was a member of the Board of Directors of the University of Haifa and is an active member of INCOSE & INCOSE_IL (past president). He is a Fellow of INCOSE.

Ron S. Kenett

Ron S. Kenett is Chairman of the KPA Group and Senior Research Fellow, Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Research, Technion, Israel. Ron was awarded the Royal Statistical Society 2013 Greenfield Medal and the 2018 European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics Box Medal for excellence in the development and application of statistical methods. He has authored and coauthored 14 books over 250 publications in international journals. His extensive consulting experience includes engagements with organizations such as Amdocs, Nice, HP, Intel, Israel Aircraft Industries, RAFAEL, Teva, Perrigo, Unilever and ECI Telecom. He founded the point and click translator company, Babylon.com and is member of the board of several startup companies. Ron holds a BSc in Mathematics (with first class honors) from Imperial College, London University and a PhD in Mathematics from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.