Welcome
Welcome to my blog, which I hope you'll find to be an interesting mixture of real-world experience, ideas, comments and observations.
Tom Gaskell
I've worked in industry as a consultant, manager and quality trouble-shooter for most of my career.
After spending 14 years in a multi-national consulting organisation and 10 years working in telecomms design and manufacturing start-ups, I set up the Cambridge (UK)-based quality, manufacturing and business consultancy Primilis (http://www.primilis.com) in 2006.
Category Archives: Product quality & reliability
Eddie Mair rattles my speakers
Intermittent problems are a real pain. They never show themselves when you are in a position to do anything about it. I have been disappointed by the Bose sound system in my Mazda; it under-uses its sub-woofer, fails to automatically … Continue reading
Being devious about Deviations
If quality is doing “exactly what it says on the tin” (courtesy of Ronseal), what happens if you really don’t want to? What happens if you knowingly choose to do something else? Presumably that isn’t allowed? Well, yes it is. … Continue reading
Control your cosmetics – “because you’re worth it”!
No, I’m not talking about lipstick and blusher despite the tongue-in-cheek introduction. Cosmetic Inspection refers to the quality of the surfaces of products or equipment, especially those surfaces that are visible to the customer. Nothing is perfect; no material is … Continue reading
The real meaning of MTBF
Ignore some of the more disparaging descriptions of what ‘M.T.B.F.’ means; it actually stands for Mean Time Between Failures (or, for products that can’t be repaired, the term Mean Time To Failure is often used instead). It’s the inverse of … Continue reading
Posted in Main Page, Manufacturing, Product quality & reliability
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The secrets of Poka Yoke
Poka Yoke (“poh-ka yoh-kay”), translated as mistake-proofing, was developed by Toyota manufacturing engineer Shigeo Shingo in the 1960s. (Its original name, ‘fool-proofing’ was changed because some people were offended by its implications.) It’s another preventive technique that I recently promised … Continue reading
In praise of Design Reviews
I worked in one of the large Cambridge-based technology consultancies for many years and was privileged to have clients from small, inexperienced start-ups to large, established mature enterprises. Sometimes we developed products from scratch but sometimes we were brought in … Continue reading
Quality is a strategic issue
I’d like to take an overview of what quality is… and why it’s strategically important to your business. What is Quality? Quality means meeting requirements. It isn’t about providing more features, or complexity, or performance that increases cost, takes longer … Continue reading
Prevention is better than cure
Many moons ago I was blogging about Corrective Actions and said that, whilst they were invaluable, taking Preventive Actions was even better, as it should stop the problems occurring in the first place, but is considerably more difficult! I thought … Continue reading
Hong Kong and Shenzhen
I’ve just returned from a very interesting visit to a Contract Electronics Manufacturer in Shenzhen, China. Many of the things I have blogged about recently were clearly demonstrated including rigorous application of the 5S methodology along with good SPC and … Continue reading
CE marking misconceptions
To the uninitiated, product regulatory and approvals requirements seem baffling and over-complicated beyond belief; ‘bureaucracy gone mad’. CE marking is a prime example. Most products that are to be placed on the market in Europe need to have the familiar … Continue reading
