We’ve all heard the word “compliance” bounced around for years, and I think we’ve all got a pretty good handle on what it means. It’s all the technical, legal, and corporate requirements, regulations, and practices manufacturers need to satisfy as they produce and sell their products. Sound about right?
It’s clear that manufacturing compliance is essential to making sure companies are meeting the operational standards expected of them, so they can continue doing business and serving customers.
Generally speaking, the two types of compliance we mainly think of are regulatory and corporate. Regulatory compliance refers to when your organization follows state, federal, and international laws and regulations written specifically for your industry—that is, the rules and regulations set by the government and industry groups in which your company operates.
Corporate compliance is making sure that your company is operating lawfully within both the external (state and federal laws) and internal (corporate policies) regulations. In other words, following the rules your company sets up to make sure you follow the rules set up by those outside your organization.
All that being said, I’d like to focus this compliance discussion on something I’d refer to as a little more “down to earth”: the
day-to-day operations within your manufacturing environment. Where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.
Details of Compliance
“The devil is in the details,” as the saying goes. When talking about operations and the daily activities manufacturers undertake, we think about “compliance” more generally. This general definition means three distinct (and very specific) things for manufacturers, and we’d like to discuss them in detail in the blog series that will follow this “intro.” They are the following:
- Are all my quality data “good?” – I’d say that everyone considers this to mean that all values are in specification; in addition, it may mean there are no statistical violations; to others, it may also mean low defect rates. In short, it refers to the numerical assessment of collected data (variable, attribute, checklist).
- Are my data collections happening? – are the collections taking place AND taking place on time? Let’s see…8-hour shift, eight data collections performed. Check.
- Are the appropriate actions being taken when an issue is found? – for instance, when something is determined to be out-of-spec, are we recording our solution to the problem? We put the lot on hold, or we called the supervisor...or we contacted maintenance. That sort of thing.
So, that’s what we plan to talk about in this
Let's Talk About Compliance blog series. I think we can all agree that compliance is important stuff…in lots of different ways. And that we all need to remain compliant to stay in business. To do so, we’ve got to take care of all three of the aspects of compliance listed above.
InfinityQS quality management software is there for every step of your data collection compliance efforts. Our software just makes it all so much easier, so much better.
Read the rest of this blog series:
Take advantage of the technology at your fingertips today: contact one of our account managers (1.800.772.7978 or
via our website) for more information.