How To Sell Your Quality Management Plan

Your quality management plan can deliver bottom-line benefits.

Trusted by hundreds of manufacturing companies around the world:

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When You Measure the Impact of Quality Management, You Can Make a Powerful Business Argument for Continuous Improvement.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it—right? Wrong. When you invest in quality, you lower costs.

Every manufacturer knows that scheduled and preventive maintenance are required to keep operations moving at top capacity. And upgrades are expected to stay ahead of competitive threats, especially when it comes to customer-facing channels and back-office capabilities.

And yet, many quality professionals still use clipboards, pencils, and paper to manage quality on the plant floor. Even top-of-the-line, new equipment is monitored manually.

Plant workers are ready for modern quality management tools, and for more efficient ways to do their jobs. Technology isn’t a barrier for operators. In fact, technology is a natural part of their daily lives—until they get to work. It’s time to equip your workers as modern manufacturing professionals.

With the right quality management tools, plant operators can work more collaboratively with managers, quality professionals, and C-suite executives. Together, they can uncover the greatest opportunities to transform quality—and meet strategic objectives—across the company.

Investments in quality far outweigh the costs of mistakes, inefficiency, and waste. And modern quality management tools build accountability, engagement, and quality into everyday work tasks.

When you give workers the best—and right—tools for the job, the benefits add up fast.

Learn how to quantify the advantages of a strong, technology-driven quality management plan—and build a business case for modernization.

It’s time to modernize. Start building the business case for a technology-driven quality management plan.

How To Get Buy in? Start with Your Stakeholders.

Does change sound painful? Time consuming? Too difficult to justify?

Remember, quality management is a discipline—it means practicing and improving quality management every single day. That requires investing in quality.

Luckily, digital quality management tools can eliminate some of the most challenging aspects of change.

Poor communication: Modern quality management tools pool all your quality control data into one centralized server—increasing visibility, communication, and collaboration across the company. In contrast, companies using manual processes may rely on face-to-face exchanges or a mishmash of communication methods—email, team meetings, and floor notices—to explain changes, expectations, and results. Quality management tools improve communication, even as you transition to digital solutions. Plus, they keep everyone apprised and aligned as quality needs and initiatives evolve.
Ineffective documentation: Where are your manual processes stored—in someone’s head? And how do you keep track of process change and revision history? Technology-driven quality management processes are easier to implement, manage, and standardize across your company. Once a process and parameters are set, the system ensures that everyone—at every site—follows them precisely. When it comes to quality control documentation, modern quality management systems store all control metrics, and alert you when collections are missed or incomplete. That way, you know quality management practices are working.
Insufficient training: Well-planned projects can fall apart if people aren’t properly trained to implement them. In a manual quality world, workers might deviate from the script after training or implement quality practices differently at different sites. Digital quality management technology simplifies training by creating one system—and one way for quality management to be delivered across every process, product, and plant.

Efficient Data Collection

When quality control data is monitored continuously—in real time—issues get detected and resolved more quickly. At the plant level, digital tools speed up data collection and improve the overall accuracy of the information gathered. With digital data collection, handwritten errors, incomplete information, and inconsistent entries aren’t added to the data set. Digital tools also automate analytics and alerts, ensuring that the right people are notified to act—as issues occur.

At higher levels in the organization, leaders can compare SPC data across shifts, processes, lines, and plants. Reports and dashboards are created automatically, so it’s easier to discover actions that optimize quality. Analysis is more effective and efficient, and best practices can be applied across the organization.

Manufacturing Productivity

Manufacturers want their production lines to run as smoothly as possible and as close to capacity as possible. They use quality control practices to prevent inconsistencies or other failures (such as equipment or raw material defects) that delay operations.

Since most quality managers focus only on their line or shift, productivity gains are limited. But with an enterprise view of quality control data, organizations can compare performance across products, lines, sites, and other variables and arrive at best practices. Then, they can be replicated for greater organizational gains.

Quality & Consistency

Quality control practices help manufacturers meet customer expectations and compliance standards. Quality measures that ensure product consistency, such as net weight and yield, are tracked multiple times a shift. But if those figures sit on a clipboard or get filed away after each shift, they don’t contribute to continuous improvement.

Improving quality and consistency is important for the plant floor—and even better for the enterprise. When quality data is collected digitally and stored in a centralized location, leaders are able to extract more insight and value from the numbers. It’s faster and easier for executives to spot emerging trends and make strategic decisions about quality processes, goals, and investments. With an enterprise view of quality control data, manufacturers can maintain product consistency across lines, shifts, and locations.

Profitability

To improve profitability, manufactures need to reduce scrap, waste, rework, and recalls. But to fix problems, operators have to be able to see problems.
Quality managers use SPC to spot out-of-spec issues that lead to costly mistakes. With elevated, SPC-based quality control practices, you can stop problems before it’s too late to salvage time and materials.

At the line and plant level, quality control improves efficiencies, and can save hundreds or thousands of dollars each shift. Extend those capabilities across the organization, and manufacturers could save millions of dollars. Consolidated, comprehensive, accessible data gives manufacturing leaders more power over the bottom lines.

Reputation & Brand Value

Most manufacturing companies build their brands around quality. But how do they measure it? How do they prove it?

Customer satisfaction, certifications, and successful audits help tell your quality story—when (or because) it’s supported by data.

When SPC data is collected, stored, and reported digitally, it’s easier for manufacturers to validate product quality. In mere minutes, you can verify that checks were completed correctly and on time, and you can respond to customer inquiries—in detail—about specific days, shifts, lines, or lot numbers. Precise tracking helps managers pinpoint root cause, and take immediate action to protect the brand.

These benefits also roll up to the corporate level. Using enterprise-wide information about quality control and performance, leaders can make informed strategic decisions and investments that continuously improve quality—and brand positioning.

Building Benefits for Quality Teams

And what about those gains? Once change has been implemented, everyone starts to experience the benefits of modern manufacturing technology.

Plant-floor Operators

Operators need data and control charts to make decisions (e.g., Do I adjust a machine or not?). But there’s a lot of data to slog through to figure out what matters. It’s time consuming, tedious, and error prone. Operators risk missing an important trend, or jumping in to “fix” things before they need remediation.
Modern quality management tools help plant-floor operators focus on their specific areas—not everything all at once.
• The data they need is automatically calculated—and charted into formats they can use
• Relevant data collections are presented up front to reduce distractions
• Notifications and alerts let operators know when rule violations or other issues need their attention
• Quality issues are automatically documented, graded, and prioritized

Learn how a carton manufacturing plant empowered its operators to eliminate defects.

Plant Managers & Quality Professionals

Plant managers and quality professionals need data to develop and measure process improvements. But if they rely on manual processes, they may spend more time managing data than managing quality.

Manual data collection is time consuming—and may result in critical analysis gaps. Entries could be missing, inaccurate, or incomplete. And without the ability to efficiently filter and organize information, quality data quickly loses its meaning and value.

Digital quality management tools take away painstaking data management tasks, enabling managers and quality professionals to see the insights in their data faster—and more clearly.

Data collection, calculation, and reporting are automated
Data and reports are accessible any time, from anywhere, and can be analyzed in real time or historically
Because data is complete and consistent, it’s easier to compare quality across processes, equipment, and shifts
Data can be retrieved quickly to answer audits or customer requests

Learn how quality managers found opportunities in their quality data.

Corporate & Executive Leaders

Manufacturing leaders need to ensure product quality and consistency across the entire company—not just for a single line or shift. And they need to find high-impact improvements that move the company toward its strategic goals.

If data is managed manually—or differently by site or product—it can be challenging for leaders to enact meaningful change. There’s too much data—with too much variation—for any of it to be actionable. Opportunities are lost in the weeds, issues are difficult to prioritize, and it’s impossible to replicate best practices.

Modern Statistical Process Control (SPC) software centralizes and unifies quality data, giving leaders better “raw material” to build decisions with. Quality intelligence tools also analyze the data automatically—and present it graphically to executives for quick decision making.

Executives can act with confidence since data feeding their decisions is complete, accurate, and reliable
Leaders can access all quality data in a unified, central repository—gaining a big picture view, and the ability to drill into line-level performance
Advanced analytics tools “grade” and prioritize quality issues to help identify quick wins—and biggest risks
Advanced reporting tools “slice and dice” data, and connect it to actionable strategies

Learn how a metal-forming manufacturer was able to improve quality and dramatically improve its bottom line.

The Costs of Quality

A quality management discipline requires investment—but it’s not a line-item expense. Quality management practices cut across departmental boundaries to improve operations—and lower manufacturing costs—overall.

With a focused quality management plan, you could:

Reduce overfill and waste
Increase yield
Maximize uptime and machine utilization
Improve operator productivity and performance
Lower workforce overhead
Retain and attract new customers

Quality management has a direct link to the bottom line. So how do you start generating ROI from your quality management plan?

With SPC-driven quality management tools and plans:

Operators work more efficiently when they’re supported by quality intelligence
The right people get the right information—when and where they need it—to understand and resolve problems
Data triggers actions on the floor, which eliminates guesswork, biases, and inconsistency
Performance issues become visible in dashboards and charts, providing managers with visual representations of problems—and their potential impact
Root cause is easier to investigate using standardized and centralized data
Opportunities are easier to prioritize with advanced analytics
Solutions are easier to replicate and standardize across the business

Can you see opportunities for improvement?
You may suspect that your processes are underperforming, but with modern, digital quality management tools you can actually see the difference quality makes.

Easy to start. Easy to expand.

nEnact empowers you to quickly realize the benefits of digital data collection and analysis. Start today with:

Five Enact licenses: add more as needed
Quick Setup wizard: your guide to configuring data collections
Video tutorials and easy-to-use help: available in our Guided Learning Center
Flexible expansion: reconfigure your licenses, add licenses, integrate with other manufacturing systems, and move to automated data collection—at any time

Learn More Get a Demo

Implementing Your Quality Management Plan

Remember: quality management is an ongoing process—not a one-and-done project. The goal is continuous improvement. Start to think about quality management as a phased process versus a final destination.The SPC-based software you need to support your quality management plan can generally be deployed in three stages: proof of concept, pilot, and rollout.

Phase 1: Proof of Concept

Choose a single line or machine to serve as the foundation for your rollout—and a blueprint for your organization.

A focused deployment on a small scale shows operators how to use digital tools to capture data—making tedious manual data collection a thing of the past. Managers and executives will learn how digital analysis and reporting work and can explore the impact.

To plan a successful proof of concept:
- Start small; use a single process (line or machine).
- Document the “before” status so you can demonstrate a measurable impact.
- Prepare master data, such as parts numbers and specification limits. Data may reside in multiple locations, so a proof of concept gives you a jumpstart on centralizing critical quality data.
- Involve multiple experts, including operators, managers, and engineers. Ask them to enter data, interact with it, and provide feedback.
Phase 2: Pilot

During the pilot phase, you’ll apply lessons learned during the proof of concept to expand across the facility. As you add more products and parts to the quality platform, you can include additional functionality—and reporting will become richer. Then you will start to see the significant time savings provided by automated data collection, reporting, and analyses.

During the pilot:
- Pick an expansion path that’s similar to your proof of concept; similar lines or sites will be able to leverage configuration work you’ve already done—and can be spun up faster.
- Focus on standardization to maximize the advantages of a centralized quality system, sync your metrics, analyses, naming conventions, and work practices.
- Dig deeper. Now that you have more data feeding into the repository, it’s time to explore advanced features and capabilities.
- Create documentation to prepare the rest of the organization, such as training materials. You can also start to estimate the resource requirements needed to support a complete rollout (e.g., time and staffing).
Phase 3: Production Rollout

Lather, rinse, and repeat! After a successful proof of concept and pilot, it’s time to apply your blueprint to other parts of the company. You can expand your modernized quality management process to other lines, facilities, and processes—and throughout the organization. As you continue developing your quality management approach, data and value will grow.

With accurate, consistent, and complete data from across your manufacturing organization, the business case for quality becomes stronger and stronger. Once fully deployed, you can:
- See the biggest opportunities for process and product quality improvement
- Prioritize opportunities—and designate the resources needed to address them
- Develop policies and processes that affect bottom-line performance
- Use quality improvement to address strategic priorities
- Empower workers—and create a culture around quality

“At the beginning of our proof of concept, the plant manager wasn’t into it. By the end, he was in love with it—and is now Enact’s biggest advocate. We’re actually using the system to effectively communicate between quality and production.”

— Jegadish Gunasagaran, QA Associate
Bakery on Main

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Elevating the Importance of Quality Control in Manufacturing

Go from “doing quality” to mastering it—and get more value for your quality management investment.

Trusted by hundreds of manufacturing companies around the world:

SPC DEMO

Minimize Production Costs, Quickly Detect Issues, and Optimize Your Product Quality

Don’t miss out! Book a demo of our specialized SPC software and unlock immediate improvements in your processes.

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Quality Control Has Always Been Important in Manufacturing. But It Hasn’t Been Influential—Until Now.

Quality practices have to be carried out for compliance reasons and to meet customer agreements. But traditionally, they’ve returned little value to the organization beyond “checking the box.”

Sure, site-level analyses translate to incremental improvements, but they don’t transform organizational performance. Quality control has been essential in manufacturing—but it hasn’t necessarily been influential.

That doesn’t have to be the case. Quality control measures can be goldmines for product improvement—and for reaching high-level strategic goals, such as lowering costs and mitigating risk. The insight you need to make more accurate and impactful decisions is being collected—probably right now—through your quality control processes.

These activities accumulate massive amounts of data—and some of your most important operational metrics. Quality control data encompasses nearly every aspect of your business, from suppliers and raw materials to equipment, people, processes, and final product inspections. All that data can be used to inform higher-level decision making—to elevate the impact of quality control in manufacturing.

To extract more value from quality control data, manufacturers need easy access to Statistical Process Control (SPC) data. Quality control tools need to be standardized, comprehensive, and actionable—for users at every level of the business.

You collect quality control data anyway, right? Why not use your information more effectively? Learn how to get more value out of the quality control practices you already have in place.

When quality control is elevated across the organization, you can optimize every process.

Why Is Quality Control Important in Manufacturing?

Make it better. Make it faster. Make it cheaper.

Manufacturers are under constant pressure to reduce waste and eliminate inefficiencies across processes—and to deliver the highest quality product at the lowest possible price. Along the way, you also need to balance customer expectations, regulatory requirements, and business goals.

Quality control practices are an essential way to track everyone’s requirements, as well as to assign standards and acceptable manufacturing ranges. Once established, quality control teams measure performance against these standards. And measure. And measure. And measure.

Then what?
Based on SPC triggers, quality managers address core quality issues such as variability, volatility, and unpredictability. But their purview is limited, sometimes to a single product, line, or shift. And their goal is to fix an issue—as quickly as possible—and move on. Like a fire department for quality concerns. When managers return to the data, it’s usually to verify that corrective actions worked, and that production returned to the statistically acceptable status quo.

Quality control is essential to manufacturing. Without the right corrective actions, production lines could stand still. And without exceptional quality, manufacturers risk everything—reputation, sales prospects, and profitability.

And yet, quality control practices can do more.
Using data they already collect, manufacturers can advance their organizations—not just defend and protect them. With enterprise software and quality control tools, data can reveal magnitudes of opportunity. Integrated SPC software makes quality control important—not just in manufacturing, but to the organization overall.

Consider how these benefits of quality control in manufacturing build value across the entire business.

Efficient Data Collection

Manufacturing Productivity

Quality & Consistency

Profitability

Reputation & Brand Value

Most manufacturing companies build their brands around quality. But how do they measure it? How do they prove it?

Customer satisfaction, certifications, and successful audits help tell your quality story—when (or because) it’s supported by data.

The Cloud Makes Meaningful Quality Insights Possible

With today’s advancements in digital technology, the best place to store this database—and your quality platform—is in the cloud. Doing so significantly reduces deployment and maintenance costs while increasing agility and supporting scalability.

You get total data visibility for all stakeholders—regardless of their location
You can access real-time data through any device—PC, tablet, and smartphone
You don’t need to worry about managing technology deployments, updates, or upgrades

Support & Extend Your Existing Systems

Integration is a key tenet of the Enact quality platform. This integration takes multiple forms:

Supply chain visibility: With Enact, you have unlimited visibility into your supply chain. Simply have suppliers enter their data into Enact’s web-based interface. There’s nothing to install or deploy at the supplier site—all they need is an internet connection and browser.
United systems: Because Enact is purpose-built for manufacturing, it’s designed to integrate with all the equipment and systems on your plant floor. Simply connect the Enact platform to your equipment, gauges, and sensors to enable automated data collection.
Seamless integration: Enact also enables seamless integration with your existing ERP, MOM, MES, and QMS systems. Not only can you use the data those systems collect, but with a simple click, you can upload quality data to those systems for a more consistent, enterprise-wide view of how quality affects and is affected by your inputs, processes, and outputs.
Expanded data value: Easily share quality Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and lot data from Enact with other plant systems. Enact simplifies this data exchange process, saving you time and effort.

Change How You Apply Quality Control Methods in Manufacturing

There’s a huge difference between “doing quality” and “mastering quality” in manufacturing.

Companies that do quality control focus heavily on data collection and action. They spend the bulk of their time checking boxes: Was data collected? When? By whom? They only look for insights if corrective action is required. And in those instances, analysis usually ends once the urgent issue is resolved.

Mastering quality control uses the same data—but applies it differently. Masters spend more time and energy proactively analyzing data, and compare metrics from across the organization to uncover best practices and opportunities. They take action after they analyze.

An analytical approach to quality management empowers manufacturers to be proactive and strategic with their quality control efforts. They uncover opportunities that support big picture strategic goals. They use quality control as a strategic lever to achieve corporate goals.

At the practical, day-to-day level, here’s what it looks like to shift from tactical quality control to strategic quality management.

During Data Collection

Organizations that do quality control:

Gather quality information, but not in a format that’s easy to access or analyze. Metrics may be stored on paper or only be available onsite.
Use different naming conventions for quality inputs, such as ingredient names or measurements. Or they might allow operators to create their own collection protocols, which introduces discrepancies.
Check measurements and results only periodically.
Manually calculate performance metrics. Human calculations are error prone compared to computers, and different calculation methods may arrive at slightly different results.
Address quality issues with home-grown solutions that aren’t replicable or that rely upon a particular person.

Organizations that master quality control:

Collect and store all quality data in a standard format—and in a centralized location. Their data is comparable across the business and for a variety of use cases—from the plant floor to the board room.
Integrate devices so leaders and operators have a more comprehensive view of quality—and how processes interconnect to support quality.
Automate calculations so they are timely and correct.

Acting on Data

Organizations that do quality control:

Are tied to their physical locations. They may require visual inspections or counts to detect quality issues. That creates challenges for supervisors who oversee more than one line or who work in large plants.
Are forced to make critical decisions based on incomplete data. Often, these decisions may be limited to go/no-go since data has to be retrieved for further investigation.

Organizations that master quality control:

Keep a constant pulse on quality. Data is accessible in real time, from anywhere with a reliable internet connection.
Can identify root cause faster because data points are integrated and connected—and data is standardized and up to date.
Easily spot ways to improve quality at both the site and the enterprise level.
Get alarms triggered by statistics—not by mistake or because of hunches or “gut feelings.”
Have automated notifications sent to the right people in the organization—for immediate remediation or investigation.

Analyzing Data

Organizations that do quality control:

Only look at historical performance data when there’s an issue or an external request (e.g., from a customer or auditor).
Are overwhelmed by the amount of data they collect. They prioritize data collection, compliance, and storage tasks over analysis because there’s just too much to dig through.
Try to use control charts to answer all quality control questions. They spend a lot of time reformatting and manipulating data to meet different users’ needs or customer data requests.
Struggle to troubleshoot issues in the moment, or test “what if” scenarios without a lot of manual work or risk.

Organizations that master quality control:

Have data sorted and sifted automatically, and pertinent reports are accessible within a few clicks.
See quality control data in real time, and can retrieve historical information from the same platform—without juggling spreadsheets.
Get reports customized for different use cases in the organization. Users get exactly what they need, when they need it—in a format they can understand and use right away.

When SPC tools are fast, accessible, and easy to use, manufacturers can analyze issues before they take action. With enterprise-wide SPC, you can finally have the tools you need to proactively address quality.

Easy to start. Easy to expand.

Enact empowers you to quickly realize the benefits of digital data collection and analysis. Start today with:

Five Enact licenses: add more as needed
Quick Setup wizard: your guide to configuring data collections
Video tutorials and easy-to-use help: available in our Guided Learning Center
Flexible expansion: reconfigure your licenses, add licenses, integrate with other manufacturing systems, and move to automated data collection—at any time

Learn More Get a Demo

What’s the Role of Quality Management in Manufacturing?

Your quality management program must support tactical, everyday quality requirements—and bigger-picture strategic goals. How can quality control programs balance both these needs and add value to the organization?

An enterprise-wide, digital SPC solution meets a diverse set of user requirements. The right solution helps you measure quality in real time, prevent costly problems, and reduce risk across the enterprise.

Here’s how a digital enterprise SPC solution can help you balance tactical and strategic quality control needs.

Tactical Applications of Quality Control

Digital tools speed up data collection and eliminate human error. Timed collections, acceptance sampling, and control charts create efficiencies in the plant.
Data becomes more accurate, consistent, and accessible.
Operators can use quality data to increase uptime and keep their lines moving.
Real-time visibility into operations leads to better troubleshooting and faster issue resolution. Managers can identify root cause faster—and take proactive measures to protect quality.
Automated calculations, alerts, and notifications help operators focus on the most important issues on the floor.

Strategic Applications of Quality Control

Standardized and configurable reporting helps everyone keep an eye on quality—which helps build a culture of quality. When everyone can see quality, everyone can affect quality.
Plant-level wins, such as reducing scrap or increasing yields, can be easily replicated across the organization. When it’s analyzed, centralized quality data leads to large-scale, long-term, enterprise-wide improvements.
Quality becomes more consistent across the entire organization, improving customer satisfaction and brand equity.
Executives can plan and prioritize quality initiatives, map out investments, and calculate the ROI from quality control efforts.
Quality becomes an influential lever toward key strategic goals, such as maximizing resources or boosting ROI.

Getting Started: What To Expect from a Manufacturing Quality Platform

When choosing a quality platform, work with your provider to pin down exactly what you want from the platform:

What are your goals for a quality solution? Do you hope to gain better insight across multiple facilities? Are you looking to improve compliance, or gain visibility into your supply chain?
What roles will access the platform, and what are their aspirations and concerns? Consider everyone who will use the solution—including floor operators, quality management, and executives.
How will you measure the effectiveness of your solution? Which KPIs matter most to you?
How will you measure ROI?

Set Up for Success

The best way to launch a successful Enact deployment is via a targeted, small-scale deployment. By starting small—one filling or packaging operation, for example—you can experience Enact and build a foundational understanding of how your quality platform can work.

You begin by setting up an Enact subscription. Then, the in-app Quick Startup enables you to set up a simple data collection right away. You can immediatetly start collecting data and see how Enact works in your manufacturing production environment. When you encounter questions or need help, the Enact Guided Learning Center provides helpful videos and online tutorials.

You get to experience Enact’s dashboards, discuss feedback from your team, and evaluate the results of your initial setup. In other words, you get to see firsthand what Enact can do for you—and how it can help you extract meaningful business insights from your manufacturing quality data.

How To Start Using Your Quality Platform: Stages for Deployment & Rollout

Stage 1: Proof of Concept: A focused deployment (on a single line or process) serves as the foundation for your Enact rollout—a blueprint for all other operations in your organization.
Stage 2: Expand Your Impact: Replicate your blueprint to other lines or across a facility. This provides an opportunity to expand Enact to other products or parts and incorporate additional functionality—such as gauges and Automated Data Collection (ADC).
Stage 3: Production Rollout: Apply your blueprint to other parts of the facility, lines, processes—and across other facilities in your organization.

Speak to a Distribution Industry Expert

What to Expect

Free 20-minute call with a product expert
Explore which solutions best suit your needs
No-pressure conversation
Get a live, personalized demo

Take the first step from quality to excellence

How To Choose a Manufacturing Quality Platform

Key considerations and best practices for smart, data-based decision making.

Trusted by hundreds of manufacturing companies around the world:

SPC DEMO

Minimize Production Costs, Quickly Detect Issues, and Optimize Your Product Quality

Don’t miss out! Book a demo of our specialized SPC software and unlock immediate improvements in your processes.

Book a Demo

Definition: What Is a Quality Platform?

What do we mean when we talk about a quality platform? Your manufacturing organization needs to prioritize decisions that will bring the greatest business benefit and help you optimize production operations. A manufacturing quality platform enables you to digitize critical quality and process data so that you can gain strategic insights into your operations. To gain that insight, you must have access to your quality and process data in digital form. A well-designed quality platform can fuel a digital transformation for your entire manufacturing ecosystem.

The knowledge and visibility contained in your quality data powers strategic decision making—not just across one product or line, but across your entire enterprise. By taking quality data out of disjointed, discrete systems—and by automating how you collect and work with that data—you can uncover opportunities to:

Proactively and intelligently reduce cost, scrap, and risk
Optimize profit and productivity
Streamline audits and analyses
Direct quality improvement resources where they’re needed most

What does this mean for you? For one, proactive quality insights reduce the number of nail-biting incidents that crop up. It can alert you to variances before they become defects—or worse, escapes. It can help you determine which areas of a line, facility, or region need the most attention. And it can help you establish best practices and propagate them across all your facilities.

A quality platform brings the benefits of SPC and quality improvement to teams across your enterprise.

How Can My Team Align To Choose the Best Cloud-based SPC Software?

It can be challenging to align your teams and gain the buy-in necessary for selecting the best cloud-based quality platform for your company. That’s why we created a step-by-step buyer’s guide—to ensure that your teams have all the information they need during this important process.

Download the Buyer’s Guide

How Is a Quality Platform Different from Your Existing Systems?

You run your manufacturing enterprise using a wide range of systems, each encompassing a slightly different business focus. The interconnectivity among these systems forms your unique enterprise application architecture.

The success of your manufacturing ecosystem depends on the health—and successful integration—of these systems.

Manufacturing Execution System (MES): This digital system connects and monitors your manufacturing equipment, providing real-time data across the product lifecycle. From your MES, you collect and analyze data about multiple inputs to create a record that captures the processes and outcomes involved in your plants. The data that your MES captures can be used in a variety of aims, including operations management, product tracking, performance analysis, resource allocation, and quality management. This system’s goal is to optimize your operations.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): This business management software provides a real-time, integrated view of your core business processes. Use your ERP to track raw materials, production capacity, and orders, among other resources. Functional areas vary widely and include financial and management accounting, HR, manufacturing, order processing, and supply-chain management. This system’s goal is to optimize resource utilization across departments and divisions.
Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM): These systems are designed to manage a variety of manufacturing processes, including interactions between people and systems, IT security services, asset and production model tracking, and data aggregation. The goal of a MOM system is to optimize efficiency across business divisions.
Quality Management System (QMS): This system documents the processes and procedures for monitoring and maintaining your quality objectives. Although many organizations collect quality data manually, the most effective and efficient systems are software-based—and can partially or fully automate data collection. The goal of a QMS is to optimize quality management across the divisions of the broader enterprise.

How Does a Quality Platform Fit into Your Manufacturing Ecosystem?

How can a quality platform fit in with your MES, ERP, MOM, and QMS? As a purpose-built manufacturing quality platform, Enact^® by InfinityQS^® goes beyond the confines of traditional plant floor quality management. It enables you to strategically collect, visualize, centralize, standardize, and analyze data—whatever the source—and provide essential integrations with your other business systems to facilitate meaningful analysis and actionable insights.

Using Enact, you can automate the collection of quality data from other systems, then standardize and centralize it into a unified data repository. Why is this step so important?

Data standardization is vital if you hope to get a true and accurate analysis of quality—a single version of truth, as it were. From naming conventions to measurement units to methodologies, you can’t compare apples to oranges and expect to get accurate, actionable insights.
A centralized repository is essential when standardizing data for Statistical Process Control (SPC) analysis and business analytics. You can be certain that data is collected, labeled, and stored consistently—regardless of its source.
The best option for data centralization is a relational database, which enables you to use and leverage data in multiple ways.

The Cloud Makes Meaningful Quality Insights Possible

You get total data visibility for all stakeholders—regardless of their location
You can access real-time data through any device—PC, tablet, and smartphone
You don’t need to worry about managing technology deployments, updates, or upgrades

Support & Extend Your Existing Systems

Integration is a key tenet of the Enact quality platform. This integration takes multiple forms:

Supply chain visibility: With Enact, you have unlimited visibility into your supply chain. Simply have suppliers enter their data into Enact’s web-based interface. There’s nothing to install or deploy at the supplier site—all they need is an internet connection and browser.
United systems: Because Enact is purpose-built for manufacturing, it’s designed to integrate with all the equipment and systems on your plant floor. Simply connect the Enact platform to your equipment, gauges, and sensors to enable automated data collection.
Seamless integration: Enact also enables seamless integration with your existing ERP, MOM, MES, and QMS systems. Not only can you use the data those systems collect, but with a simple click, you can upload quality data to those systems for a more consistent, enterprise-wide view of how quality affects and is affected by your inputs, processes, and outputs.
Expanded data value: Easily share quality Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and lot data from Enact with other plant systems. Enact simplifies this data exchange process, saving you time and effort.

Quality Insights Empower Manufacturing Optimization

What capabilities should you demand in a quality platform? Remember, your quality and process data is your direct source for product quality and business insights. And that means different things to different people in your organization:

Your operators need timely notifications to help them standardize data collection and spot process deviations as quickly as possible.
Your quality managers need the ability to verify that products across each line in a facility meet quality standards.
Plant managers need insight into workflow efficiency and productivity.
Executives need an enterprise-wide view of profitability and proficiency—across multiple locations and regions.

A quality platform provides a focused view of information each of these roles, when and where they need it. It delivers focused data insights efficiently and effectively, helping you optimize workflows, sort through today’s data “noise,” and save valuable time and resources.

Data collection: Whether you use manual, automated, or semi-automated collection techniques is up to you. A robust quality platform will support automated capture (from calipers, scales, and so on) and simplify manual operator entry (through touchscreens and barcode scanners, for example).
Operator empowerment: With so much happening on the manufacturing floor, operators need all the help they can get focusing on specific areas and real-time events. Look for a quality platform that provides a way to filter data according to relevance—while enabling timed alerts and notifications. A dashboard that is customizable according to role or priority, is an invaluable tool.
Analytics: The key to actionable insights is in-depth analytics. Many manufacturers find value in SPC and KPIs. With your centralized data powering analysis of both real-time events and historical trends, you can easily surface the most valuable information—then use it to make smart, strategic decisions.
Transformation: Now that you have a focused, prioritized view of the data that matters to you—and the ability to analyze and synthesize it in a variety of ways—you are set to turn quality intelligence into business intelligence. What are the big-picture questions across your enterprise? Perhaps you want to know which facilities are running most efficiently—and how to duplicate that success at other locations. Or maybe you need to decide where to dedicate resources to see the greatest or fastest ROI.

Enact includes features—such as bubble charts and data stream grading—that make it easy to distill data across systems and locations, enabling the collaboration and prioritization that lead to dramatically effective results.

Read the Whitepaper

Easy to start. Easy to expand.

Enact empowers you to quickly realize the benefits of digital data collection and analysis. Start today with:

Five Enact licenses: add more as needed
Quick Setup wizard: your guide to configuring data collections
Video tutorials and easy-to-use help: available in our Guided Learning Center
Flexible expansion: reconfigure your licenses, add licenses, integrate with other manufacturing systems, and move to automated data collection—at any time

Learn More Get a Demo

Getting Started: What To Expect from a Manufacturing Quality Platform

When choosing a quality platform, work with your provider to pin down exactly what you want from the platform:

What are your goals for a quality solution? Do you hope to gain better insight across multiple facilities? Are you looking to improve compliance, or gain visibility into your supply chain?
What roles will access the platform, and what are their aspirations and concerns? Consider everyone who will use the solution—including floor operators, quality management, and executives.
How will you measure the effectiveness of your solution? Which KPIs matter most to you?
How will you measure ROI?

Set Up for Success

How To Start Using Your Quality Platform: Stages for Deployment & Rollout

Stage 1: Proof of Concept: A focused deployment (on a single line or process) serves as the foundation for your Enact rollout—a blueprint for all other operations in your organization.
Stage 2: Expand Your Impact: Replicate your blueprint to other lines or across a facility. This provides an opportunity to expand Enact to other products or parts and incorporate additional functionality—such as gauges and Automated Data Collection (ADC).
Stage 3: Production Rollout: Apply your blueprint to other parts of the facility, lines, processes—and across other facilities in your organization.

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What to Expect

Free 20-minute call with a product expert
Explore which solutions best suit your needs
No-pressure conversation
Get a live, personalized demo

Take the first step from quality to excellence

Digital Transformation in Manufacturing: The Role of Quality

Trusted by hundreds of manufacturing companies around the world:

SPC DEMO

Minimize Production Costs, Quickly Detect Issues, and Optimize Your Product Quality

Don’t miss out! Book a demo of our specialized SPC software and unlock immediate improvements in your processes.

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Quality Management Is Your Gateway to Industry 4.0.

Manufacturers know it’s important to modernize equipment and tools. But if they’re not investing in the processes and data that feed continuous improvement, they’re not maximizing their investments.

Think about Amazon, whose website and ordering process is slick. But if the company doesn’t fulfill your order in two days (or less), you won’t be satisfied.

What happens behind the scenes is what really matters. In manufacturing, that means every process must come together perfectly, every time, to deliver on customer expectations. Close isn’t good enough.

Oh, and customer expectations? Those change by the second. Natural disasters, political turmoil, generational trends, and global health crises can upend shopping habits and supply chains—overnight.

It’s a tall order for manufacturing organizations to fill. To meet rising expectations around quality, service, and speed, you need more agile and responsive operations. But how do manufacturers know what to respond to? Or how to respond?

In digitally transformed manufacturing companies, data leads the way. More specifically, quality control data leads the way. Advanced manufacturers apply quality control measurements and data toward big-picture challenges and opportunities. They digitally transform their organizations—not just their lines—to embrace more efficient, accurate, and results-focused business practices.

Quality is central to every step in the manufacturing process, but quality hasn’t connected the steps in a meaningful way until now. That’s because manual methods of gathering, analyzing, and sharing data tend to be siloed—connecting the dots is impossible on modern manufacturing lines. There’s too much data to sift through—and no way to quickly and reliably decipher what it means.

Digital transformation in manufacturing erases those barriers—giving quality teams the platform, tools, and insight they need to quickly respond. Digital transformation can help you build manufacturing resilience—and prepare for whatever comes next.

Digital transformation in manufacturing can elevate quality and accelerate strategy.

What Is Digital Transformation in Manufacturing?

By leveraging the core elements of quality control, quality management teams should be able to answer business-critical questions such as:

What are the quality standards or benchmarks we expect from our sites?
Where are the biggest opportunities for quality improvement?
Which site is performing best? How and why?
Which site should lead a new product launch?
Where are capital investments needed most?

Unfortunately, many manufacturers can’t answer these questions at an enterprise level—not without lots of data manipulation and spreadsheet juggling, anyway. And in those cases, data integrity is questionable. How confident are you that every data point—at every site—was collected and calculated the same way?

In today’s competitive environment, there’s no room for uncertainty. Executives need accurate insights from quality data to make strategic decisions for the company.

Luckily, the data to answer these questions is already being collected on the plant floor. The challenge is making data more reliable, accessible, and actionable.

That’s where digital transformation comes in. To find the answers inside the data, manufacturers need the right tools. Quality data needs to be collected and stored digitally, in a central and standardized repository. From there, modern analytics can help you re-imagine quality and transform your business.

Technology-driven quality management practices provide three key benefits over manual methods:

Enterprise visibility. Integrated quality management tools give leaders enterprise-wide insight into operations—which affects the entire organization, not just one plant or process.
Operational insight. Centralized data repositories link important data points—from the supply chain to the production line—and help identify areas of opportunity. Reporting is also standardized, automated, and accessible, which makes it more actionable.
Global transformation. Enterprise visibility and greater insight affect the entire organization, not just quality practices. By applying quality control data globally, manufacturers can streamline, optimize, and transform operations and achieve consistent, exceptional quality at every site. Improvement never stops—and results can be replicated for greater magnitudes of ROI.

Digital Transformation Is Fundamental To Compete in Industry 4.0

Many manufacturers have taken preliminary steps toward digital transformation. Perhaps they’ve embraced Industry 4.0 by automating processes or by installing Bluetooth sensors to monitor equipment.

Those are important steps. But to leverage the data that’s being generated, manufacturers need to take digital transformation further. Instead of simply digitizing traditional or manual processes, they need to build stronger connections between systems, processes, and outcomes. Digital tools must talk to one another—using a common language—so data makes sense.

A cloud-based, Software as a Service (SaaS) quality platform brings it all together. Purpose-built, enterprise-wide tools enable more comprehensive and transformative quality management practices.

For example, in a digitally transformed approach to quality management:

Data from disparate systems is unified in single repository
Data is standardized across shifts, products, and processes
Data is easier to collect, analyze, share, and apply

These benefits of digital transformation aren’t just conveniences. They lead to “big picture” views of the organization—without losing the opportunity for operators to dig into targeted, in-the-moment metrics. Manufacturers shift from “collecting quality data” to building quality as a competitive advantage.

With analytics-based quality insights, manufacturing leaders elevate the role of quality in their organizations. When decisions about quality performance are driven by quality data:

Process automation becomes more effective and powerful. With connected data, operators can fine-tune processes for maximum results.
Quality compliance and monitoring occur in real time, enabling companies to keep a constant pulse on quality—and react quickly to areas of concern.
Manufacturers gain efficiencies through quality automation and exception-based responses.
Leaders can have more confidence in their decisions—because they’re backed by real-time intelligence and accurate, complete data.

A comprehensive approach affects more than just quality. Digital transformation in manufacturing supports total manufacturing optimization.

Transform the Way You Use Quality Control Data in Manufacturing

Traditional quality management tools can’t keep up with the demands of modern manufacturing organizations. Yet a recent survey found that 75% of manufacturers still collect data manually. Nearly half still use paper checklists.

Manual processes could be introducing unnecessary risk:

Paper-based data collection is much more error-prone than automated data collection. Information might be written down incorrectly or fields could be left blank. And if the information must be keyed into a digital format, the same risks rear their heads again. Depending on the entry, a small mistake could lead to catastrophic consequences.
Spreadsheets are error-prone, too. Mistakes creep into formulas, or fields can be deleted. Spreadsheets are also difficult to compare across lines, sites, or other variables. Leaders spend a lot of time formatting and manipulating data just to make it usable—without total confidence in its accuracy.
Paper reports and checklists need to go somewhere once they’re completed. Do they always make it to the right person, on time? And storing paper reports for future retrieval, let alone historical comparison, is a huge headache.
Manual control charts are only as good as the data that feeds them. And when they take too long to prepare, distribute, review, and understand, problems can get out of hand before they are identified.

Cloud-based Statistical Process Control (SPC) tools pool all your quality control data—and automatically return extensive, flexible views of performance. With customized reports, notifications, and alerts, your operations and quality teams can save valuable time—and make better use of your quality information.

Are You Ready To Ditch Paper and Spreadsheets?

Take a look at the factors driving digital transformation—and how a tactical move to cloud-based quality management can help you become more agile and efficient.

Read the Whitepaper

How Digital Transformation Benefits Manufacturers

Digital transformation connects all your quality management data into a comprehensive, purpose-built solution. When compared to home grown or patchwork solutions, true digital transformation is centralized, standardized, and scalable.

Centralized. All your quality data resides in one unified repository, regardless of product, process, or location.
Standardized. Quality data is collected, stored, and calculated the same way—across processes, lines, and plants. You no longer have to manipulate data sets to make them comparable, or translate spec names or measurement ranges for every site.
Scalable. Cloud-based SPC solutions can be deployed and accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. No hardware or software is required.

Need to See Digital Transformation in Manufacturing in Action? Watch These Quick Case Studies.

Make Processes More Competitive, Less Costly

A food manufacturer calculated its raw material costs down to the gram, and identified over $3 million in savings. How did they do it? Using line-level quality data they had already collected.

Better SPC Tools Expose Fresh Opportunities for Quality Improvement

Side-by-side comparisons of production lines and product codes revealed major variances at a top-tier tool manufacturer. By looking at in-spec quality data, they discovered opportunities to reduce scrap and waste—and improve quality, productivity, and profitability.

Quality Management Focus Yields Dramatic Savings for a Large-form Manufacturer

A metal-forming manufacturer had a 45% scrap rate at one of its plants. By analyzing quality data, they completely eliminated out-of-spec product—and dramatically increased throughput. The key to massive bottom-line cost savings was already within reach: in their quality data.

Speak to a Distribution Industry Expert

What to Expect

Free 20-minute call with a product expert
Explore which solutions best suit your needs
No-pressure conversation
Get a live, personalized demo

Take the first step from quality to excellence

InfinityQS Training by Advantive

Explore the many training options available for InfinityQS users of all levels.

Optimize Your InfinityQS Software

Maximize the value of your InfinityQS SPC solutions and achieve your quality goals faster with our online training and performance support. We offer effective, always-available remote learning solutions that leverage the power and convenience of eLearning, multimedia, and robust help system technologies.

Enjoy the convenience of remote learning with our basic and advanced online learning portal. Our self-paced eLearning courses are available online 24/7 in interactive multimedia formats that make learning engaging and effective. These courses are designed to help you develop the fundamental skills required to successfully adopt and utilize InfinityQS ProFicient and InfinityQS Enact across your company.

InfinityQS offers instructor-led training (ILT) at your location. Courses include presentations and hands-on instruction that develop the knowledge and skills employees need to become productive quickly. Customer site training offerings are available on request.

We offer a variety of learning and performance support resources to broaden your knowledge and support your cloud SPC software deployment. The InfinityQS Enact Help Center provides convenient, always available access to training resources that support deployment, adoption, and optimization.

This exclusive workshop is designed to provide InfinityQS ProFicient users with detailed working knowledge of three important automated data collection software components: data management system, data collection service, and remote monitoring service. Reach out to your Advantive account manager for more details.

Discuss Your Training Needs

What to Expect

Honest conversation about your training requirements
Discover what training programs best fit your team
Instant access to free, on-demand product training and documentation

Mastering Quality Management

Elevate the role of quality in manufacturing to optimize processes, productivity, and profits.

Trusted by hundreds of manufacturing companies around the world:

SPC DEMO

Minimize Production Costs, Quickly Detect Issues, and Optimize Your Product Quality

Don’t miss out! Book a demo of our specialized SPC software and unlock immediate improvements in your processes.

Book a Demo

“Are we capable of making high-quality products, day in and day out? InfinityQS ensures that we are.”

— Tracy McConnell, Vice President of Technical Services
King & Prince Seafood

Transform Your Approach to Quality Management

Quality management and checklists seem to go hand in hand. But the two aren’t synonymous. Inspections and checklists can’t drive meaningful, enterprise-wide quality improvements.

It’s time for manufacturers to move away from practicing quality management—and start mastering it. Mastering quality management means focusing on higher-level strategic goals that can be achieved through quality—such as reducing waste or lowering costs—rather than only day-to-day compliance metrics.

Think of it this way: Efficiency is a great goal, but it’s really just a means to an end. You strive for efficiency so that you have more time, material, and resources to get other, more important things done.

Likewise, quality management processes and tools can be used to address bigger-picture, strategic goals—while still meeting detailed customer specifications and compliance metrics. The exact same data and quality management tools that drive tactical, plant-floor-level improvements can be applied toward strategic outcomes.

You have to think about quality management differently. It starts with data.

On the plant floor, quality management centers on how data is gathered, calculated, maintained, and documented. Operators use real-time data to address issues that are immediate or urgent. Then, the data is forgotten. There’s little time for analysis. And “what-if” testing is typically a “no go.”

For most manufacturing organizations, quality management means managing metrics and controlling quality, but not necessarily improving or optimizing processes. Quality data is greatly underutilized—which means opportunities are missed.

There is a better way. Instead of collecting and forgetting your quality data, you can centralize it in a unified repository so it’s accessible for deeper analyses. Notifications, alerts, and calculations can be standardized and automated, making the data more accurate and reliable across sites. And by looking at uniform data across the organization, you can spot and address trends to achieve a greater impact.

When you extrapolate insights from your quality data—across your organization—the value of the data expands. With the right mindset, the quality data you’re collecting today can do more for your organization tomorrow.

Learn how to make the shift toward strategic quality management.

Elevating the Importance of Quality Control in Manufacturing

Quality practices are essential for compliance with regulatory and customer requirements. But traditionally, they’ve returned little value to the organization beyond “checking the box.” Quality control has been essential in manufacturing—but not necessarily influential.

What happens when you elevate the importance of quality?

Learn More

Digital Transformation in Manufacturing: The Role of Quality

Manufacturers know it’s important to modernize equipment and tools. But if they’re not investing in the supporting processes and data that feed continuous improvement, then they’re not maximizing their investments.

How does quality data provide your gateway to digital transformation?

Learn More

Learn how to make the shift toward strategic quality management.

Quality Management Principles to Build Your Discipline

Caring about quality is nice—but it doesn’t help you achieve meaningful goals that improve products, performance, or profit. To do that, you need to establish standards—quality principles—across your organization.

How do you embed quality principles into your company culture?

Learn More

How to Choose Quality Metrics for Quality Management in Manufacturing

Having enough data isn’t a problem for manufacturers; making sense of it is. A quality management discipline standardizes data practices, so leaders have access to data when they need it—and have confidence in the quality of that data.

What can your quality metrics tell you about your manufacturing operations?

Learn More

Learn how to make the shift toward strategic quality management.

How to Sell Your Quality Management Plan: Make the Case

Investments in quality far outweigh the costs of mistakes, inefficiency, and waste. And modern quality management tools build accountability, engagement, and quality into everyday work tasks. When you give workers the best tools for the job, the benefits add up.

How will you demonstrate the way to lower the cost of quality?

Learn More

How to Choose a Manufacturing Quality Platform

To optimize manufacturing production operations you must have access to your quality and process data in digital form. A well-designed quality platform can fuel a digital transformation for your entire manufacturing ecosystem.

What do you need to know when choosing a manufacturing quality platform?

Learn More

Have You Mastered Quality Management?

Easy to start. Easy to expand.

Enact empowers you to quickly realize the benefits of digital data collection and analysis. Start today with:

Five Enact licenses: add more as needed
Quick Setup wizard: your guide to configuring data collections
Video tutorials and easy-to-use help: available in our Guided Learning Center
Flexible expansion: reconfigure your licenses, add licenses, integrate with other manufacturing systems, and move to automated data collection—at any time

Learn More Request A Demo

Quality Management Is More Than a Checklist

Here’s some good news: You can improve quality using the same tools you rely on to keep production lines moving today. Both tactical and strategic approaches to quality management use a common methodology: Statistical Process Control (SPC).

The trick is to embrace SPC across the entire enterprise—and with the same discipline that’s applied on the plant floor. When you leverage modern, digital quality management solutions to create a comprehensive quality management discipline, it’s possible to optimize all of your manufacturing operations. Digital access to data empowers you to address quality across your enterprise: supplier and materials management, production, quality checks, packaging, and shipping. Digital tools enable your people, processes, and technology to come together.

Empowering People to Take Meaningful Action

Quality isn’t a one-person or even a one-department job; every level of the organization has a role in advancing quality. With access to the right information, each person is empowered to take the right actions at the right times.

Quality Professionals
They are responsible for day-to-day quality control issues. Data collected on the plant floor informs bigger-picture quality issues and opportunities. To affect quality overall, plant floor operators and quality leaders need technology-enabled tools—such as tablets and other smart devices—so they can accurately and efficiently record quality data and control variance across shifts, products, and lines.

Plant managers
They need a practical way to monitor and prioritize site- and line-level issues—without getting lost in spreadsheets. Most SPC tools have limited reporting capabilities, often relying on managers to retrieve, format, and compare data, and then hunt for conclusions. Different managers might arrive at different quality conclusions, priorities, and actions. An enterprise-wide SPC tool can bring pertinent information to the forefront by using automation to prompt actions based on rules and workflows—rather than leaving users to rely on “gut feelings.”

Corporate leaders
They can elevate quality across the company by applying site-level best practices across the enterprise—if they can see them. With access to quality data from across the organization, executives can find and address improvement opportunities that will make the greatest impact. When viewed across the business, quality data guides decisions about resources, improvement projects, and future investment.

Optimizing Processes Consistently Across the Enterprise

Quality management practices have to be in sync, line by line and plant by plant. Otherwise, data and performance metrics aren’t reliable or replicable.

Manufacturing is improved when companies use a standardized, enterprise-wide, technology-enabled process to collect, store, and analyze quality data. A unified approach helps manufacturers realize more value at every step in the quality management process.

During data collection, a digital quality management platform can prevent:

Incorrect or outdated forms from being used on the plant floor
Errors from handwritten, misread, or miscalculated quality data
Incomplete or inconsistent data collection across shifts, products, lines, or locations

Manufacturing companies that use an enterprise SPC solution can avoid:

Data becoming lost or inaccessible to decision makers
Having to juggle spreadsheets or manipulate data to make it useful
Catching violations, variation, or other issues too late

During reporting, companies using digital solutions can:

Access quality information at any time—no matter where they’re working
Easily compare KPIs across sites in simple-to-read charts, graphs, and reports
Trace quality processes back to any point in time, and view detailed information about raw materials, shifts and operators, specific lines, and equipment

Using Technology To Bring It All Together

People and processes connect through technology. Picking the right quality platform is foundational to mastering quality management.

The right technology platform for your quality management practice:

Lowers the risk of error caused by miscalculations and data gaps
Consolidates data from multiple sources (e.g., equipment, lines, locations) and from across the entire organization
Automates essential reporting activities and interventions
Gives users the information they need to do their jobs, when and where they need it
Helps users and managers dig into root cause, draw comparisons, and spot emerging trends
Supports good decision making based on accurate and complete information
Increases real-time visibility into all of your operations

That’s not a pie-in-the-sky wish list. With the advantage of cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery models, a robust quality platform is within reach of most manufacturers.

An investment in digital quality management is your gateway to greater digital transformation.

Turning Quality Data into Actionable Insights

When you bring people, processes, and technology together to manage quality, you collect more than just data points. The data begins to tell a bigger story—providing prescriptive insights about how to improve quality.

What is Actionable Quality Data?

Quality data analysis enables quality professionals and corporate leaders to spot meaning in their data. With a quality platform, instead of sifting through sifting through dozens of charts or raw data—hoping to see a pattern—you can immediately detect what’s hidden in that data.

Behind the dashboard, the software consumes and processes volumes of statistical data points—and issues of greatest importance rise to the top. That information is presented in an intuitive, graphical way that helps leaders ask the right questions—and take the right actions.

The Essential Role of a Quality Platform

Manufacturers need software solutions that provide instant, easy access to actionable data—especially as the speed and complexity of operations increase. Clipboards and spreadsheets can’t keep up.

Digital transformation is a necessity—not a nice-to-have.

Organizations have options about how they transform their quality management practices.

You can leverage single-function solutions to simply digitize manual processes.
Or you can leverage a more capable solution to enable total manufacturing optimization.

The second approach is more ambitious—and possibly more challenging. But it also offers a much bigger bang for the investment—and produces measurable ROI across the business.

What’s the difference?
Manufacturing optimization builds a framework for reaching more impactful, strategic goals. In a modern quality platform, all your quality data is stored in a purpose-built, centralized data repository. That allows you to coordinate sustainable and meaningful quality management practices across the organization.

Quality platforms improve products and manufacturing processes by ensuring SPC data is always compliant, prioritized, and applied.

Data collection is more complete, consistent, and efficient when it’s managed digitally through an integrated SPC platform.
Process models and other visual representations help you use quality information more intelligently.
Standardized formats and dashboards speed up line-level decisions, while executive-level views offer the ability to see past gaps or blind spots.
A consistent and centralized approach to data allows for deeper analysis—and more accurate decision making. When reporting is automated, managers spend more of their time analyzing and acting on insights than focusing on organizing spreadsheets and charts.
A quality platform enables you to extract more value from the SPC data you’re already collecting. Quality data can be accessed in real time—and benchmarked over time. By looking at enterprise-wide SPC data, you quickly expose underperforming processes and root causes.

Data that is integrated and accessible has more value to the organization—and to related systems and processes. With an integrated quality management platform, you can continuously investigate and improve quality.

Ready for Digital Transformation?

Manual data management methods are time-consuming, frustrating, and vulnerable to inaccuracies.

In the free white paper, Moving Away from Manual Processes, you can learn how to use affordable, real-time SPC software and modern techniques to implement more effective approaches.

Download the Whitepaper

What Does a Quality Platform Look Like in Action?

Consider these practical ways a quality platform helps manufacturers work smarter.

Compliance

Quality engineers spend much of their time creating and checking charts to make sure product quality compliance requirements are being met. They’re asking: is data in spec? Are SPC rules being met? Is the right data being collected on time, every time?

With a quality platform, those questions are answered automatically. Managers are notified of issues and can take corrective actions quickly—then refocus their attention to higher-value problems.

Prioritizing Quality Improvements

Managers and quality engineers often spend more time collecting and formatting data than analyzing or applying it. Since they look only at granular data—at the site or line level—it’s hard to measure the magnitude of a problem. Plus, it’s easy to get sidetracked by proverbial “squeaky wheels.” At the corporate level, quality data is often inconsistent or incomplete from site to site.

With a digital quality platform, data from multiple plants and timeframes can be pulled together, benchmarked, and prioritized. Enterprise-wide SPC solutions create “report cards” of quality data that are easy to understand and share—so you can clearly prioritize the biggest risks and opportunities. Managers along the chain of command can see quality data and prioritize company-wide responses.

Exploiting Software

Many operators spend their time reviewing control charts—even digging into data to verify that it is correct. With more data and charts, it’s easy for operators to become overwhelmed or focus on the wrong charts. And do the charts really matter? A visual might be affirming, but it could also be a distraction.

A quality platform reduces complexity by creating reports and control charts automatically, then displaying information tailored to user roles. The software does the mundane repetitive tasks, like looking for violations, and alerts the right people (e.g., an operator or line leader) to fix the issue. That prevents people from looking for problems or correcting anticipated issues instead of actual, statistically confirmed problems.

Strategic Applications

In an effort to stay within compliance, every organization collects quality data. Most manufacturing organizations apply it tactically to measure and maintain quality—and that’s it. Quality data is then filed away, sometimes literally in filing cabinets, where it sits until an auditor or customer requests documentation. Then, the data is painstakingly retrieved, lacking all context.

With a quality platform, manufacturers can use quality management data to add value and advance strategic initiatives. Quality data never stands alone. It’s integrated with other information—such as supplier data and machine settings—and can be applied through a number of tools to benefit different users’ needs. When an organization’s quality tools and data are completely unified, the underlying intelligence becomes more powerful for the entire organization.

Speak to a Distribution Industry Expert

What to Expect

Free 20-minute call with a product expert
Explore which solutions best suit your needs
No-pressure conversation
Get a live, personalized demo

Take the first step from quality to excellence

What is SPC?

Trusted by hundreds of manufacturing companies around the world:

SPC DEMO

Minimize Production Costs, Quickly Detect Issues, and Optimize Your Product Quality

Don’t miss out! Book a demo of our specialized SPC software and unlock immediate improvements in your processes.

Book a Demo

SPC Tools – Empirical Rule Chart, PP and PK Fallout Rates

Looking for convenient SPC tools? Take a look at our SPC Pocket Card which contains additional resources, including empirical rule chart and Ppk fallout rates, and keep it handy for future reference.

SPC Tools

Monitor your quality control process with advanced SPC tools. Use an empirical rule chart, Pp and Ppk Fallout Rates tables and more control charts. InfinityQS Proficient delivers many SPC tools for businesses in need of process optimization and quality control. The following charts serve as additional SPC tools and resources, including Pp and Ppk fallout rates, control chart constants, empirical rule chart, capability study and capability formulas.

Download our SPC Pocket Card

Pp and Ppk Fallout Rates

Calculated Capability Ratio	Pp Fallout (both sides combined)	Ppk Fallout (one side only)
0.50 0.60 0.70 0.80 0.90 1.00 1.10 1.20 1.30 1.40 1.50 1.60 1.70 1.80 1.90 2.00	133,620 71,860 35,730 16,396 6,934 2,700 966 318 96 26 7 2 0.340 0.060 0.012 0.002	66,810 35,930 17,865 8,198 3,467 1,350 483 159 48 13 3 1 0.170 0.030 0.006 0.001

Control Chart Constants

X and R Control Charts

X and S Control Charts

n	A2	D3	D4	d2
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12	2.660 1.880 1.023 0.729 0.577 0.483 0.419 0.373 0.337 0.308 0.285 0.266	– 0 0 0 0 0 0.076 0.136 0.184 0.223 0.256 0.283	– 3.267 2.574 2.282 2.114 2.004 1.924 1.864 1.816 1.777 1.744 1.717	– 1.128 1.693 2.059 2.326 2.534 2.704 2.847 2.970 3.078 3.173 3.258

n	A3	B3	B4	C4
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25	0.975 0.927 0.886 0.850 0.817 0.789 0.763 0.739 0.718 0.698 0.680 0.663 0.647 0.633 0.619 0.606	0.284 0.321 0.354 0.382 0.406 0.428 0.448 0.466 0.482 0.497 0.510 0.523 0.534 0.545 0.555 0.565	1.716 1.679 1.646 1.618 1.594 1.572 1.552 1.534 1.518 1.503 1.490 1.477 1.466 1.455 1.445 1.435	0.9727 0.9754 0.9776 0.9794 0.9810 0.9823 0.9835 0.9845 0.9854 0.9862 0.9869 0.9876 0.9882 0.9887 0.9892 0.9896

Special Cause Rules

Empirical Rule

Capability Study

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ProFicient™, the leading real-time Quality Management solution, goes beyond typical site-based quality applications by offering an enterprise-ready architecture and statistical process control. Still have questions or need help with SPC tools? Contact us today for more information about our SPC software. It’s time to re-imagine your quality control process.

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What is SPC?

Trusted by hundreds of manufacturing companies around the world:

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Six Sigma Process Control

If you are implementing Six Sigma to improve quality and eliminate defects, InfinityQS plays a critical role in the DMAIC project cycle.

Our software and services help you Define your objectives, Measure your products, Analyze your data, Improve your processes, and Control your quality.

Define

InfinityQS Consulting Services will help you define your goals and business case, create a project scope and roadmap and determine a timeline.

Measure

InfinityQS Data Collection and Integration features allow you to input any type of measurement data into your system for analysis. InfinityQS Metrology tools help you ensure that your measurement devices are calibrated for accuracy and that your gages are functioning properly and yielding reliable data.

Analyze

ProFicient employs highly sophisticated analytical tools and statistical equations that allow you to sort, slice and dice data in millions of ways, allowing extensive comparative analyses.

Improve

The data and analytics provided by ProFicient empower you to make real-time process improvement decisions. The software sends you instant alerts when your processes are out of control (or are approaching limits), allowing you to immediately fix your process before defects occur.

Control

All of InfinityQS products and services are based on the principles of a controlled manufacturing environment for maximum quality and minimal defects. When your processes are in control, so are your products and your costs.

InfinityQS software plays a key role in implementing Six Sigma. Supported Six Sigma requirements include:

Control charts for both variable, defects and defectives data.
Advanced Pareto Analysis to support defect management, analysis, defect weighting analysis, cumulative defect counts through several process operations.
Million-way sorting of defects (by part, by process, by operator, by operation, by supplier, by anything tagged to the data).
Easily import and export between 3rd party applications (e.g. Excel, Minitab, JMP, Statistica).
InfinityQS is widely used by major corporations that have adopted the Six Sigma philosophy – Honeywell (formally AlliedSignal), Johnson & Johnson (Ethicon Endo Surgery, Cordis), Solectron

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What Is Statistical Process Control?

Taking the guesswork out of quality control, Statistical Process Control (SPC) is a scientific, data-driven methodology for quality analysis and improvement.

Trusted by hundreds of manufacturing companies around the world:

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Minimize Production Costs, Quickly Detect Issues, and Optimize Your Product Quality

Don’t miss out! Book a demo of our specialized SPC software and unlock immediate improvements in your processes.

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What is Statistical Process Control (SPC)?

Statistical Process Control (SPC) is an industry-standard methodology for measuring and controlling quality during the manufacturing process. Quality data in the form of Product or Process measurements are obtained in real-time during manufacturing. This data is then plotted on a graph with pre-determined control limits. Control limits are determined by the capability of the process, whereas specification limits are determined by the client’s needs.

Data that falls within the control limits indicates that everything is operating as expected. Any variation within the control limits is likely due to a common cause—the natural variation that is expected as part of the process. If data falls outside of the control limits, this indicates that an assignable cause is likely the source of the product variation, and something within the process should be changed to fix the issue before defects occur.

With real-time SPC you can:

Dramatically reduce variability and scrap
Scientifically improve productivity
Reduce costs
Uncover hidden process personalities
Instantly react to process changes
Make real-time decisions on the shop floor

Visit our Case Studies page to learn how top manufacturers are using SPC.

Measuring the ROI of a Real-Time SPC Solution

To quantify the return on your SPC software investment, start by identifying the main areas of waste and inefficiency at your facility. Common areas of waste include scrap, rework, over inspection, inefficient data collection, incapable machines and/or processes, paper-based quality systems and inefficient lines. You can start to quantify the value of an SPC solution by asking the following questions:

Are your quality costs really known?
Can current data be used to improve your processes, or is it just data for the sake of data?
Are the right kinds of data being collected in the right areas?
Are decisions being made based on true data?
Can you easily determine the cause of quality issues?
Do you know when to perform preventative maintenance on machines?
Can you accurately predict yields and output results?

For more detailed information about SPC and SPC software.

Learn more about Statistical Quality Control.

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How To Sell Your Quality Management Plan

SPC DEMO

When You Measure the Impact of Quality Management, You Can Make a Powerful Business Argument for Continuous Improvement.

It’s time to modernize. Start building the business case for a technology-driven quality management plan.

How To Get Buy in? Start with Your Stakeholders.

Efficient Data Collection

Manufacturing Productivity

Quality & Consistency

Profitability

Reputation & Brand Value

Building Benefits for Quality Teams

Plant-floor Operators

Plant Managers & Quality Professionals

Corporate & Executive Leaders

The Costs of Quality

Easy to start. Easy to expand.

Implementing Your Quality Management Plan

Phase 1: Proof of Concept

Phase 2: Pilot

Phase 3: Production Rollout

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Elevating the Importance of Quality Control in Manufacturing

SPC DEMO

Quality Control Has Always Been Important in Manufacturing. But It Hasn’t Been Influential—Until Now.

When quality control is elevated across the organization, you can optimize every process.

Why Is Quality Control Important in Manufacturing?

Efficient Data Collection

Manufacturing Productivity

Quality & Consistency

Profitability

Reputation & Brand Value

The Cloud Makes Meaningful Quality Insights Possible

Support & Extend Your Existing Systems

Change How You Apply Quality Control Methods in Manufacturing

During Data Collection

Acting on Data

Analyzing Data

Easy to start. Easy to expand.

What’s the Role of Quality Management in Manufacturing?

Tactical Applications of Quality Control

Strategic Applications of Quality Control

Getting Started: What To Expect from a Manufacturing Quality Platform

Set Up for Success

How To Start Using Your Quality Platform: Stages for Deployment & Rollout

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How To Choose a Manufacturing Quality Platform

SPC DEMO

Definition: What Is a Quality Platform?

A quality platform brings the benefits of SPC and quality improvement to teams across your enterprise.

How Can My Team Align To Choose the Best Cloud-based SPC Software?

How Is a Quality Platform Different from Your Existing Systems?

How Does a Quality Platform Fit into Your Manufacturing Ecosystem?

The Cloud Makes Meaningful Quality Insights Possible

Support & Extend Your Existing Systems

Quality Insights Empower Manufacturing Optimization

Easy to start. Easy to expand.

Getting Started: What To Expect from a Manufacturing Quality Platform

Set Up for Success

How To Start Using Your Quality Platform: Stages for Deployment & Rollout

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Digital Transformation in Manufacturing: The Role of Quality

SPC DEMO

Quality Management Is Your Gateway to Industry 4.0.

Digital transformation in manufacturing can elevate quality and accelerate strategy.

What Is Digital Transformation in Manufacturing?

Digital Transformation Is Fundamental To Compete in Industry 4.0

Transform the Way You Use Quality Control Data in Manufacturing

Are You Ready To Ditch Paper and Spreadsheets?

How Digital Transformation Benefits Manufacturers

Need to See Digital Transformation in Manufacturing in Action? Watch These Quick Case Studies.

Make Processes More Competitive, Less Costly

Better SPC Tools Expose Fresh Opportunities for Quality Improvement

Quality Management Focus Yields Dramatic Savings for a Large-form Manufacturer

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