Flipping a Switch from Paper to Digital

Introduction

Enacting a Switch

A North America-based manufacturer of electrical and electronic components produces switching, control, and circuit protection products for a multitude of markets. The company’s quality-driven mission—combined with its highly-advanced product development methodologies—assures outstanding product performance.

Though most consumers have never heard of them, many of us use this company’s products every day. From buttons that open and close car windows to car touchscreens to the circuit breakers in your basement, this company makes products that play a critical role in many industries—and in our lives.

Because creating in-spec products is their top priority, this company chose InfinityQS® Enact® to ensure high quality across plants—and around the world. Says their Director of Quality, “The data collected by Enact improves engineer and operator accountability by exposing needed process tweaks—and by empowering targeted fixes designed to eliminate future issues.”

Drop the Clipboards, Pencils & Paper

Flipping the Page from Paper to Digital

Most manufacturers track quality data—yet many still capture this critical information using paper and pencil. This company’s multiple plants generated dozens of paper reports every day, and spotting trends hidden in that data was clunky and time-consuming.

The team sought a modern, digital method of collecting and analyzing their quality and process data, and wanted instant access to real-time information—from all their plants. According to the Director of Quality, “We wanted to view all the data we collect in one online platform, so we could analyze it better. Enact gives us that.”

Enact unifies all quality and process data, improves collaboration, and enables faster decision making. “We chose Enact because it was built for the cloud, and makes collaboration easy,” says the Director of Quality.

Building a Roadmap to Enterprise Success

A Focused Pilot Program Leads the Way

InfinityQS recommends initially deploying Enact on a single line or process. By starting small, you can optimize your use of Enact and create a foundational system setup—a blueprint—that can be replicated across your organization. This strategy also helps ensure that:

›Your team members don’t get overwhelmed while learning a new tool

›You add value every time you add a new process

›You ensure standardization and consistency across the enterprise

During their pilot program, this manufacturing team first used Enact to monitor a line that produces 100 pieces of a niche product per day. Because Enact is a webbased, visual tool, engineers quickly learned how to build their own data collections and checklists. Following this success, the company was ready to conduct a more complex rollout at one large plant—with more product lines, six operations, many operators, and numerous product variations.

After seeing successful improvements at this larger plant, the company implemented Enact in their Mexico plant, a facility that includes many more operations, different product variations, and hundreds of operators and inspectors.

This electrical/electronic components manufacturing company is often required to quickly design and launch products based on market demand—and lifecycles are short. According to the Director of Quality, Enact enables them to design a product today— and launch it within 1-2 weeks— with no production issues. They wanted a hyper-responsive product that wouldn’t slow them down, and Enact delivers.

Improved Visibility + Shared Best Practices = Competitive Advantage

The Power of Standardization

Standardization gives this electrical device company 100% confidence that they always deliver the highest-quality products to the market. They have plants in different countries that all make the same products, and they needed to “share and compare” site performance to fully understand fluctuations in quality. The ability to quickly and easily understand—and share—this data is paramount.

Enact makes it simple to standardize product and part naming conventions, which enabled this manufacturer to develop best practices that now guide all new product launches. Says the Quality Director, “With Enact, we can quickly dig into our quality data to determine if a product has a packaging issue, which enables us to make quick fixes and minimize loss.”

“Enact is very helpful in all areas of our manufacturing processes. It enables us to standardize and streamline operations—which keeps our quality high and our customers happy.”

Faster, More Accurate

Enact Helps Make Audits a Snap

Like most manufacturing firms, this company takes audits very seriously. One way they ensure customer and regulatory compliance is by conducting regular audits as part of every process. Prior to using Enact, they used paper forms to collect audit data—which took days.

Audits now take less than an hour. Instead of sifting through boxes and boxes of paper check sheets, quality professionals quickly and easily view relevant audit data in Enact—on any mobile device.

“Enact makes it simple to conduct audits. What used to take us several days now takes less than an hour. That benefits us—and our customers—tremendously.”

How to Select a Cloud-based Quality Management System

1. Choose a tool that provides robust data collection and analysis features across products, lines, and plants.
2. Consider how easy or difficult implementation will be.
3. Find a cost-effective solution that is flexible, and supports your quality monitoring goals.

You Can’t Fix What You Don’t Know

Real-time Monitoring = Continuous Improvement

No manufacturer wants bad products to get into a customer’s hands. Enact includes real-time alarms that alert stakeholders to process and production issues as they occur—so problems can be fixed before they escalate. Because Enact is cloud-based, this electrical device manufacturer’s operators and engineers can capture and track quality data on mobile tablets—which is especially helpful in their plants with multiple lines. Says the Quality Director, “Let’s say an inspector is monitoring six lines. If that inspector is next to line 6 when something goes wrong on line 2, it might take a while for him or her to notice and react.” In this scenario, “Until that inspector goes back to line 2 and investigates the issue, they have no idea what’s going on. By the time the line has been stopped, we may have already produced hundreds— or even thousands—of flawed parts. The real-time mobile alerts in Enact help prevent issues from escalating, which adds up to tremendous cost savings.”