[sanddrag]

On 696, we've won the Quality Award three times. Once in 2012, and twice this year. To us, quality is more of a mindset, a philosophy, and a way of doing things than it is a punch list. It's about carrying an attitude that "Good enough isn't" and "If we aren't going to do something as good as we possibly can, why are we doing it at all?" and "Every detail matters." Personally, I don't take part in things I can't do well, and I do pay attention to the details, because they do matter.

Quality is about recognizing when something is done poorly, and not being afraid to throw it out and redo it, no matter how much effort was put into it nor whose feelings may be hurt. Students have cried on our team during this process, but they now know quality, and are proud of their improved standards, and absolutely nail their tasks to perfection in many areas.

We try not to allow too much hack work (we lower the bar for prototyping), and we try to use professional grade software, equipment, and measuring tools to design, manufacture, and verify our parts. It's easier to make quality parts, with quality tools equipment.

Our vision to improve our team was heavily influenced by Team 968 and further inspired by visiting the San Diego regional in 2012 as spectators, and compiling enough photographs of teams' pit areas to make a PowerPoint presentation of "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly." It has now become an annual routine viewing on our team, to show students the differences between teams' work habits, displays, and "curb appeal" if you will.

We also try to follow an industry-type workflow with our management of electronic data, using reliable servers for collaboration and long term storage of critical data, a check-in an check-out process for CAD data, and job-sheets for any parts to be manufactured on the CNC. Finally, this year, all sub-groups on our team were asked to develop and document a set of "Standard Operating Procedures" for everything that we do. Our goal is that one day these will be detailed enough for any new member to be able to do any role on the team simply by reading about it beforehand. The SOPs will eventually include everything from setting up for lunch in the parking lot of an event to operating a ratchet strap (mandated training for 2016) to fastener types to welding to manual and CNC lathe operations and more. This will be a multi-year effort, that I don't anticipate will be complete soon, but once it does reach a state of near-completion, it will be a fantastic resource for new members.

While most of our team can recognize when something is not as good as it can be, we've yet to have a formalize QA process. We really ought to soon.