Quality Control of Your Engineering Programs

Continuous improvement became a requirement for accreditation of engineering programs by listening to the needs of industry who by and large were the users of the engineering graduates. All manufacturing companies and many companies that provide engineering services practice quality control of their product. The existence of their business depends on consumers buying and continuing to buy. It used to be that armies of inspectors examined each product item to ensure it met specifications. This added cost and time to the production process. Today, organizations like ISO have refocused quality to look at the process that produces the product. If the process is defined and followed, the resulting product should meet specifications and only spot checking is required. The quality organization is smaller and refocused, resulting in less cost and less time added to manufacturing while enhancing quality.

From this culture then, industry wanted quality control implemented in the academic environment. They wanted engineering programs to understand the needs of the community that hired their graduates and they wanted a mechanism in place that identified when those needs were not being met so that corrective action could be taken. But unlike industry, engineering programs or engineering colleges did not possess a quality organization. It does not make economic sense! So it was left up to faculty members, already over tasked, with little or no training and perhaps with a biased view, to check the quality of their own work!

Assessment of engineering programs is not a full time job. But a viable assessment process must be established, documented, routinely conducted with an independent view and results published so that action can be taken to improve the program as necessary. What makes sense is to outsource this task to an organization that specializes in academic assessment, is familiar with ABET accreditation processes and understands continuous improvement in an academic environment. Continuous improvement is so important that it has become a corner stone of engineering accreditation. Contract with an expert do it for you!