No quality control system is perfect. Just think “Toyota” in the context of today’s headlines and that should be abundantly clear.

Taking Toyota’s predicament to heart—for any quality manager in any industry—means thinking through where the inherent weaknesses are in production processes and product design. Are there inherent weaknesses in any electronic system? Yes. Are mechanical systems failure-proof? No. Any and every system can fail—and it is up to quality management to accurately understand the real failure thresholds that they must manage.

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