Quality Control Methods Can Uncover Opportunities
Before manufacturers can improve quality, they have to measure. Quality checks provide essential data that leaders need to make process improvement decisions. Quality monitoring and management is also required to verify that manufacturers are meeting regulatory requirements or customer specifications.
To gather all of the data they need to ensure quality standards are met, quality managers must juggle a variety of quality control methods. By the end of each day, they accumulate massive amounts of information. And then what?
Unfortunately, many quality managers lack time to do anything with their quality data beyond “checking the boxes.” That means they’re missing major opportunities.
By incorporating your proven quality control methods into a digital quality solution, you can access insights fast and resolve problems at lightning speed.
A Solid Foundation: Statistical Process Control for Quality Improvement
A top quality manufacturing approach starts with statistical process control (SPC), the industry-standard approach to measure and control manufacturing quality. At a fundamental level, SPC entails continuous and consistent inspection and mapping of results to reveal variations.
Companies who use SPC to drive continuous improvement are able to:
- Dramatically reduce waste and scrap
- Lower operating costs
- Minimize downtime
Real-time access to SPC quality data can change the way you approach quality. Rather than react to problems, you can prevent them.
Quality professionals strive to achieve these benefits by applying a wide range of quality control methods such as:
- Specifications—Manufacturers set requirements that a product or service must meet.
- In-Process Sampling—Either randomly or at timed intervals, sample units are pulled from the line for inspection, measured, and recorded.
- Control Limits—Sample results are compared against established statistical boundaries. The measurements are used to determine whether processes are operating as expected or exhibiting unusual behaviors. Using proper control limits, one can detect even small deviations from the established norm.
- Process Capability Indexing—Variations can be measured and compared to their specifications limits to quickly determine levels of expected fallout and visually see whether a problematic process is inherently not capable of meeting requirements, or if the fix is just a simple adjustment.
A Picture of Continuous Improvement
Process behaviors are brought to life using SPC control charts, which are graphical representations of a process’ output patterns compared to statistical limits. Control charts help quality leaders turn thousands of individual data points into an insightful story about quality. Because they provide an at-a-glance view of data, they may provide the first indication that quality is slipping, and they can guide in-depth investigations and analyses.
InfinityQS software is designed to intelligently build and display control charts so manufacturing leaders can solve quality problems quickly—and uncover new opportunities—without juggling spreadsheets or calling IT for support.
InfinityQS supports all the most commonly used SPC tools, such as:
Do You Know Where to Focus Your Time?
InfinityQS solutions give quality professionals unprecedented visibility into products, processes, and operations without the burden, time, and effort of building charts and reports manually. See how our control charts, dashboards, and alerts help leaders prioritize and speed up quality improvement efforts—and maximize results.
Improve Quality in Less Time
With traditional quality control tools, quality professionals are faced with too much to do and not enough time. Modern SPC-based quality management software can help manufacturers improve quality operations without draining their most valuable resource: time.
Leveraging SPC, InfinityQS solutions can:
- Reduce complexity—Visual models such as control charts and dashboards simplify quality control. Issues that need immediate attention stand out, and you can connect quality issues to their root causes faster.
- Accelerate results—With InfinityQS software, preventive or corrective actions can be taken in real time. Empowered team members can monitor quality control methods from nearly any device and initiate cost-saving measures without delay.
- Take quality to the next level—With strong quality control methods in place, manufacturing teams can uncover key opportunities for improvement and build a strong culture around quality.
Ramp up is easy. InfinityQS software is designed specifically for manufacturing companies and comes with intuitive user interfaces and extensive self-help resources. Data collection methods are designed to fit seamlessly into your existing production processes—and never burden operators or slow down the line.