Also called quality control plan, reaction plan
What is a control plan?
A table saying, for every characteristic that matters, what gets measured, how, how often, and what happens when it is wrong.
What else it is called
- Other names
- quality control plan, reaction plan
- In French
- plan de surveillance
Related entries
Understanding control plan
A table that turns risk analysis into daily instructions. Each row names a characteristic, its specification, the gauge used, the sample size and how often, the method of recording, and the reaction plan when the result is out of limits.
The reaction plan is where most of these fall down. "Notify supervisor" is not a reaction plan. A usable one says who is told, whether the machine keeps running, how far back the suspect material goes, where it is quarantined, and who authorizes the restart. Those decisions are easy to make calmly in advance and hard to make well on a night shift.
Control plans normally exist in three stages: prototype, pre-launch with tighter inspection, and production once capability is demonstrated. Staying on pre-launch controls forever is a sign the capability was never proved.
In practice
Read your own reaction plan column as though it were two in the morning and the supervisor is off sick. If it does not tell the operator what to do with the parts already made, it is not finished.
Frequently asked
Who owns the control plan?
Quality usually writes it, but it describes what production does, so it is worthless unless production agreed to it. A plan written in the quality office and handed over is one the floor will work around.