Quality and Reliability Assurance / Handling Precautions030901QUA-12002-02-20Quality And Reliability Assurance / Handling PrecautionsIn recent years, technical revolutions have become almost a daily occurrence in theelectronics industry. This is accompanied by the increasing application of semiconductors inboth the consumer and industrial sectors, and demands for higher quality and higherreliability.Toshiba is making every effort to improve both quality and reliability with the followingquality control system which incorporates product design, quality assurance for parts andmaterials received, manufacturing process quality assurance, shipping quality andreliability assurance, and quality after-service based on user demands and market surveydata.1 Quality And Reliability Assurance1.1Quality AssuranceTrying to sense the customer’s needs, we do our best to incorporate the quality andreliability required by the customer into the design, while considering the safetyand PL (Product Liability) of the products.Quality and reliability evaluation are performed on the developed productsaccording to the Toshiba’s reliability test standard which is prepared in conformitywith JIS, EIAJ, MIL, etc., thereby certifying the design. The parts and materialsare standardized through the engineering department and the quality assurancedepartment. After the design is accepted, standardization is performed by theengineering department on the parts and materials, process plan, and inspectionplan. Engineering Institution of Works (EW) is then established on the workingdetail. The quality and reliability evaluation are performed on the mass-producedproducts on an experimental basis.In the mass production, the production department has control of themanufacturing process, the environment and facility, and the quality assurancedepartment. Quality assurance performs incoming inspection of parts andmaterials, modification control, instrument control, periodical reliability test andline audit. The production technology divisions also participate in processimprovement, automatization, etc.Education and training for quality and reliability, are given to new workers,inspectors, engineers and small groups (QC/ZD movement). In shipping thefinished products, a lot quality assurance test is performed by the quality assurancedepartment. We then commence preparation of specifications meeting pre-arrangedquality and reliability standards and the inspection and reports on discrepantproducts “quick action” as the motto. Figure 1 shows the quality assurance systemof semiconductor.
