| Title |
An Audit Expert System for Construction Quality Management System |
| Authors |
Lee Dong-Eun ; Son Chang-Baek ; Lim Tae-Kyung |
| Keywords |
Expert System ; ISO 9000 QMS ; Quality Auditing ; Quality Measurement ; MATLAB |
| Abstract |
This paper introduces an Expert System Auditing Quality Management System for Construction(AQM) which assess the performance of a Quality Management System(QMS) implemented in a construction firm. It assess the effectiveness and the confirmity level of QMS and diagnoses the nonconformity of an existing component of the QMS compared to the ISO 9000 QMS’s 20 components. The expert rule bases is constructed with the facts and rules obtained from the ISO 9000 standards. The system integrates the requirements of ISO 9000 QMS, clarifies the results of quality audits, reduce the variation between different human quality system auditors, and facilitates to make a consistent decision making involved in quality audit. It provides quality auditor with an interactive user interface, an explanation module for reasoning its conclusions, and an assisting module for understanding a specific assessment requirement. AQM contribute to the field of construction quality management, specifically to continuous quality improvement because it (1) increases the maintainability of a quality management system by making the quantification of quality performance possible, (2) fills in the gap in the construction community as a quality management system assessor, (3) increases the usability of the historical quality audit records, (3) simplifies the tedious and burdensome process involved in keeping track the progress of quality audit and in recording the audit results of the many requirements, (4) effectively handles the variability of the quality audit results attributed by different human quality system auditors. Therefore it contributes to make more rigorous quality audits and continuous quality improvement. The section entitled to "Control of inspection, measuring and test equipment", which is the 4.11 requirements of the ISO 9000 QMS, is used as a case to illustrate the system and its functions. It is implemented as an easy-to-use computerized tool programmed in MATLAB. |