SPC is not just another acronym to be ignored. SPC can drive real outcomes throughout your business. Improved quality is just the start of the positive impact you can create tapping into the power of SPC. If you leverage a purpose-built SPC tool, you can get even more value out of your data:

• Mitigate recall risks
  • Recall events cost companies an average of $10 million every time they happen, and with social media being what it is, any recall event is going to be out, and out quickly
• Reduce waste rework, and return issues
  • Depending on your industry, uncontrolled scrap or waste can be one of your largest customers. Investing in, and properly using SPC solutions can help mitigate this risk.
• Improve traceability
  • A recent study suggested seventy-five percent of surveyed food and beverage manufacturers rely on manual data collection, while half of those polled are still using paper checklists.
• Satisfy government or regulatory requirements
  • When an auditor shows up at your front door, it tends to cause a mild crisis. The front office lets someone know out on the floor that the auditor’s in your conference room, or even worse, on their way out to the lab.
• Deliver enterprise visibility and reporting
  • Pulling your data from files, index cards, or printing out a home-grown spreadsheet – if you can get your hands on them easily – isn’t efficient, practical, and frankly sends the wrong message. “Don’t pull out your hair, pull your data.”
• Accommodate customer documentation requirements
  • Using an SPC tool with data living in a secure, centralized environment provides peace of mind.
• It can also help you:
  • Meet sustainability goals
  • Optimize margins & increase profitability
  • Drive efficiency & productivity
  • Optimize production

Why aren’t more manufacturers taking advantage of what SPC can deliver for their organizations?

We hear a lot of excuses as to why a company isn’t taking advantage of SPC and the tools that enable it:

• It isn’t a priority for the company at the moment
• Customers don’t know where to start
• They’re afraid of being bogged down by inefficiency
• Companies don’t think they have the budget
• The cost of change or implementation seems too high
• They’ve managed to succeed so far, why change now?

But unleashing your quality data is much easier than most organizations think. In fact, the right SPC tool can provide a solution to each of these in 3 ways:

• Drive purposeful data collection from a multitude of sources
• Create meaningful analysis that helps you achieve your quality goals
• Enable visibility that elevates the role of quality and continuous improvement in your organization

Data

Let’s start with the data. You have tons of data at your fingertips, but what is your data telling you? Your data has two lives:

• Collection: This could be an operator on the shop floor who sees data coming through in real-time. They’re alerted of potential issues and adjust the equipment which could affect the process outcome. But are they, and you, focused on the right data?
• Analysis: Once the data is collected, the next question is: What can you learn from the data? We all know that the key is to control variation, be it within a process, a specific part, or a metric within the organization. Simply put, what is the data telling me, and where should I put my focus?

Having centralized, standardized data nomenclature is critical to an organization’s understanding of their processes and can’t be understated. This would include specific part numbers, process names, and any other identifier that would be used to differentiate.

Visibility

If we want to elevate the role and impact of quality, we need to make sure the entire enterprise can access the data and use it!  Quality isn’t just important on the shop floor, it’s a true business concern.

Using an SPC solution with data that’s standardized and secure will grow with your organizational needs and can be deployed across multiple platforms will help lower your cost of quality. Regardless of where your operation is located, there are options that can be employed that will meet your needs. And typically we see an ROI realized within a few months, quickly elevating quality visibility in your organization.

Collecting data gets people thinking about areas from which data isn’t collected—and where it would be beneficial to do so—making them think of other ways in which quality can be improved and where additional costs could be reduced. What else could you be doing?

• Instant operator feedback and actionable information.
• Enhanced problem solving.
• Ensure product consistency
• Lower costs – even when nothing is out of spec. It’s in spec but out of control. What do we need to do?
• Pinpoint opportunities for improvement across the enterprise.

Evaluating SPC Tools

Looking for the right SPC software could feel overwhelming, but Advantive can make it very simple for you. You want to be working with a partner that understands your operational issues and the problems you want to solve, how to standardize and collect the data, and most importantly make it visible across your organization. We’ve also created a comprehensive checklist you can access here.

If you already have an SPC solution, there are reasons to re-think your existing system:

Your data is separated and siloed, you’re bogged down by inefficiencies and using a system that no longer meets your or your organization’s needs, or (and we hear this a lot) your customer’s reporting requirements are outpacing the capabilities of your existing system.

Roughly 15 percent of valuable data relates to shop floor operations, including process control, prevention of problems, efficiency improvements, and more. But what about the other 85 percent of data that nobody is looking at—the data that hasn’t indicated the presence of any problems. What other areas could you be exploring.

If you haven’t put an SPC system in place before, there is some work to be done before you get started, however there are resources readily available to help with some of the things you can do, and we’d be happy to assist you as well.

We know SPC and want to talk about it with you. Reach out to your Advantive representative today.