Today more than ever, the demand for producing quality products in a timely manner is a major concern for manufacturers. Companies have to now cater to consumers who know exactly what they want and where else they can get their goods; after all, the competition is always waiting with bated breath to steal your consumers.
But with the statistical resources that are currently available for manufacturers to utilize, the probability of losing business due to faulty production has been greatly reduced. One such resource is called statistical process control, or SPC.
In business, SPC refers to a method of quality control that ensures whether production is stable enough to meet the rigid demands of the public. It is a way of collecting and interpreting data with the intention of monitoring and controlling output.
The interpreted data ultimately serves to inform key stakeholders—from operators to engineer to management to executives—on a wide range of intelligence related to performance, quality, costs, and profitability.. This is done by creating control charts that can detect numerical variations in quality. In this method, progress is measured over a certain amount of time. When the system stops detecting variations and projects consistent output, processes are then stable and can be contolled.SPC methods have been widely used by companies for the past 60 years and these statistical readings continue to play an integral role in how businesses keep up with an ever increasing quality demand.
Most recently, technology has evolved to a state where it can now offer a streaming view of a facility’s efficiency level at all times and on a variety of platforms including mobile. SPC platforms allow company leaders the ability to confidently make decisions and alter aspects of production with the security of seeing the actual quality of their investments as they are made in real-time.
Implementing SPC can help a company be more profitable. Real-time monitoring greatly reduces the risk of recalls, scrap, giveaway, warranties and waste. A consistent product also drives more revenue as customers respond to high quality with repeat and referral business. Moreover, SPC takes the guesswork out of business decisions by providing concrete evidence about how processes are actually performing.