Qualität in der Halle.

Quality is made on the shop floor, not inspected in the office: inspection, complaints, first-off samples and certificates in the metalworking company.

A certificate on the wall does not stop a complaint. The example company in the book has had one hanging in the corridor since 2014 and had 61 customer complaints the year before, whose defects cost more than the company earns.

The book shows owners, works managers, foremen and quality officers in metalworking companies with ten to 250 people how a company takes its quality into its own hands: counting complaints by cause, measuring the first-off part before the second is made, writing inspection plans that work on the shop floor, handling a complaint in eight steps instead of reworking ten times, getting measuring equipment in order, delivering first-off samples, inspecting goods receipt, keeping three figures on the board every week and treating the audit as a walk-round. Plus the question of which certificates are worth it, and what to do when a serial defect reaches the customer. The book does not replace legal, insurance or standards advice and does not replace a welding supervisor; it says at every point when the specialist belongs in the room.

A fictional sheet-metal company with 44 people, Hollmann Blechtechnik, accompanies the book through the first year of its new quality officer Sandra Pieper: on 12 January eleven open complaints and a letter from the biggest customer with the grade "C" lie on her desk. By the end of the year there are 24 complaints instead of 61, failure costs have fallen from €318,000 to €172,000, the customer audit brings grade "A", and four things did not work out. All figures are assumptions. With 19 chapters in four parts, 31 figures, eleven calculation and work sheets, nine checklists, a glossary and an index.

365 pages, A5, softcover, €45.00. ISBN 978-94-0396-587-1. Published in German.