Once you adopt the quality control mindset, you want to make sure that you have all of the pieces necessary for smooth sailing during production. There are a lot of different aspects that make up quality control and each one is equally important.
Here are some of the core ingredients that you need in order to leverage a complete enterprise quality management solution:
Data collection and integration
It is vital that you build your plan around quality metrics. This process starts with analyzing your production to figure out your strengths and weaknesses and setting realistic goals for your company. These goals relate primarily to individual processes, and the initial stages involve figuring out where you could be eliminating waste and how you could be bettering your operation.
Real-time monitoring and instant alerts
In today’s enterprise, it is vital that you have access to real-time monitoring and instant alerts so that you can be informed as soon as any issues arise, such as variation, unsafe products or unbalanced ingredients during production. When you have access to real-time monitoring, it is possible to see exactly when something starts to go wrong during production and act on the situation in order to rectify it.
Workflow management
When manufacturing processes are automated, workers can be alerted instantly when something goes wrong in the enterprise and can act accordingly. Aside from assuring that the job gets fixed, automated technology keeps a paper trail showing that a worker was informed of the issue, so that he or she could act on the situation. Process automation eliminates the question of worker integrity and ensures that problems get solved accordingly.
Advanced reporting
It is not enough to merely record raw manufacturing data. Executives need to be able to take this data and turn it into a valuable resource through advanced reporting. A complete enterprise quality management solution will boast advanced reporting capabilities such as box and whisker and pareto charts and histograms. Data needs to be sliced and diced in order to notice trends over time and benchmark performance.
Single database repository
When data is being pulled from disparate or proprietary IT systems, it is all but impossible to get an accurate picture of your process as a whole. Data needs to be collected and stored in a single quality control hub in order to accurately gauge processes and ensure enterprise quality management is taking place.
So, do you have a robust enterprise quality management solution in your enterprise?