How to Improve Quality in Manufacturing

Quality control focuses on quality requirements, such as ensuring a part meets specifications. Quality assurance refers to the sum of all actions and processes needed to demonstrate that quality requirements are fulfilled. In automobile manufacturing, quality control focuses on parts meeting specifications and tolerances. QC ensures engines, drive trains, and other mechanical parts operate smoothly, efficiently, safely, and as designed. A significant aspect of quality control is the establishment of well-defined controls.

Creating a product is costly, time-consuming, and can be unsafe without controls in place. Additionally, if a company sends defective products out for purchase, it could be held liable for injuries or issues that arise from using its products. Quality control inspectors ensure that defective or unsafe products are identified, and the causes are corrected. By following these five steps, good management teams can develop great quality programs within their organizations. Set up some time with our team to learn how our machine data platform can leverage your data and improve your quality.

Quality Control Methods

Individual sites started passing regulatory inspections more confidently and without any noted compliance issues or regulatory observations. For the branded pharmaco, the changes reduced both the number of quality incidents and its cost of poor quality, improving its risk profile with no added investment in IT, capital, or other resources. Rising margin pressures, particularly in consumer-oriented industries such as fast-moving consumer goods and medical

products, limit how much companies can spend on quality practices. Organizations therefore cannot just be good at quality—they need to be smart about it as well. With this scrap data accurately collected, quality managers can review the largest reasons for poor quality via pareto charts and begin making process changes to reduce the amount of scrap generated. When a manufacturer uses software and systems to maintain SOPs, plan tasks, and guide organizational improvements using centralized KPIs, they are engaging in quality assurance practices.

Quality Assurance Best Practices and Methods

Quality control means how a company measures product quality and improves it if need be. Quality control can be done in many ways, from testing products, reviewing manufacturing processes, and creating benchmarks. These capabilities and more are possible using a production monitoring platform like MachineMetrics. By leveraging real-time machine data, operators and managers have the visibility and information needed to prevent defects or significantly limit additional scrap. That was the case for the multinational industrial manufacturer, a giant in a sector that was suddenly becoming far more competitive as global demand

• The 100% inspection method calls for data about the manufacturing process and software to analyze inventory.
• QC includes tasks like final product inspections to ensure the manufacturing process resulted in products that achieve the desired standard of quality at an acceptable level of consistency, as defined by the manufacturer.
• Companies that have quality control methods in place often have employees who pay close attention to their work.
• Organizations therefore cannot just be good at quality—they need to be smart about it as well.
• This control chart is used for characteristics that can be measured on a continuous scale.
• Using this framework, he addresses the empirical relationships between quality and variables such as price, advertising, market share, cost, and profitability.

plummeted.

Depending on the product that is being manufactured, deviation without proper team cooperation and anticipation of the change could have dire quality repercussions. Maintenance will always be required, and much of it’s done at the hands of experienced, dedicated staff with specific skill sets. But many maintenance tasks can be performed by operators as the need arises. Those running the machine can perform tasks like cleaning, lubrication, startup checks, and quality checks. Every company should have audited, documented quality procedures and a robust program to maintain and update specifications.

Quality isn’t only the operating procedures for inspection and intervention. Standard operating procedures are needed for machine operation, raw materials staging, assembly, and every value-added process in the production stream. Quality must be defined so that everyone knows what measurements will be used and what terminology is accepted. Quality expectations must be set for operators, managers, and quality inspection staff. Let’s take a closer look at what quality is defined as within a production environment as well as how you can improve production quality while retaining efficiency.

This is why it is most common for manufacturers to use OEE for measuring performance, as it takes into consideration production quality. There are a few core measurements that every manufacturer uses to manage their operation. Measurements like efficiency, productivity, capacity, labor, and equipment utilization are almost universally measured to benchmark performance and assess the effectiveness of processes. A more stable manufacturing environment in which customer complaints and quality-related costs both fell by more than one-quarter.

These must be accessible to those who need them, like operators and line quality staff. Procedures must include a component for action or improvement when defects are found. If managers develop strategies that are too expensive, it will greatly reduce the overall efficiency of the business as profit margin will shrink. The key is defining quality accurately, and building strategies to address it in a cost-efficient manner while ensuring the end result leads to customer satisfaction. Quality is an equally critical metric that must be a part of an overall assessment of business health. Because measurements like efficiency and productivity don’t necessarily mean high quality, implementing plans to improve these other measurements must be accompanied by quality procedures to prevent waste and rework.

The 100% inspection method calls for data about the manufacturing process and software to analyze inventory. The quality control used in a business is highly dependent on the product or industry. For example, in food and drug manufacturing, quality control includes ensuring the product does not make a consumer sick, so the company performs chemical and microbiological testing of samples from the production line.

When you make something, you better ensure there’s nothing faulty about the product. If a customer buys your product and it doesn’t work, at best, you’ll lose a customer and at worst, you’ll be served with a lawsuit. It should be no surprise that the ASQ suggests manufacturers add agile methodology to their lean programs. First, quality products “satisfy their stated or implied needs,” meaning they do what they say they’ll do. Second, quality products are free of deficiencies, meaning there’s no flaw in the design or production of the good that would prevent it from doing what it should do.

The Taguchi Method considers design more important than the manufacturing process in quality control and tries to eliminate variances in production before they can occur. In a non-manufacturing business, quality testing can involve customer service evaluations, questionnaires, surveys, inspections, or audits. A business can use any process or method to verify that its end product or service meets the customer’s needs and is safe and legal. This technology includes software for QMS, preventive and predictive maintenance programs, and manufacturing execution systems. Quality can also be improved by utilizing industrial IoT, where connected factory assets can be monitored down to the spindle level and defect inspection is moved closer to the point of production. Leveraging machine condition monitoring, maintenance teams can ensure that they are guided by accurate equipment data to plan out maintenance activities.

At every stage, therefore, companies across industries are achieving higher quality at competitive cost, building capabilities that prepare them for further stages of quality evolution. This is a supervisory role, one that oversees the product development processes to make sure they’re meeting the quality and efficiency standards that https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ have been set by the company and any regulatory groups. The quality manager works with clients to ensure that the final product meets their needs and requirements. This quality control method works at improving current processes, products or services by discovering and eliminating defects in order to streamline manufacturing.

This will lead to the discovery of problems that will be addressed through corrective measures. Quality assurance is process-oriented and preventative while quality control focuses on the product itself and looks for any issues with its quality that’ll impact the customer. Quality assurance is also part of the quality management plan and revolves around the activities within that plan that ensure that your product goes through production.

Employees often begin by testing raw materials, pulling samples from the manufacturing line, and testing the finished product. Testing at the various stages of manufacturing helps identify where a production problem is occurring and the remedial steps it requires to prevent it in the future. He has served as a member of the faculty at Penn State University and has taught at Pennsylvania College of Technology in electrical and mechanical engineering technology, mathematics, and physics. Jason and the Praestar Consulting team have assisted numerous manufacturers in the areas of lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, sales and marketing management, and strategy formation. To really make lasting and meaningful change in manufacturing processes, it will take a team-based approach. By involving multiple disciplines in the search for improved quality, a variety of perspectives is obtained.

Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation. Not every organization needs to achieve the highest level of quality maturity—and certainly not all in one go. But all organizations should recognize that when a trigger looms, an investment in quality capabilities can often open major new opportunities for competitive advantage.