Five Ways to Improve Quality Control in Manufacturing

Summary

Quality control matters. And there’s no other industry where this is more clear than manufacturing. Other businesses may care about quality too. However, few businesses are as close to the results of their products as manufacturing. That means that the quality of their products is the difference between success and failure.

Why quality control matters

Manufacturing is a highly competitive industry. As a result, the only way to get customers and keep their business is through the quality of your products. This means making sure that what you produce is better than your competitors. Easier said than done. Your competitors are also doing everything possible to produce outstanding products. If you want to keep up, your business needs to be able to quickly identify product weaknesses and repeatedly produce high-quality products. That’s where quality control enters the picture. Quality control does more than just ensure you produce high-quality products. It gives you the control you need to keep making high-quality products.
 

What is quality control?

But what actually is quality control? It’s easy to think of it as nothing more than a way to ensure your products meet a certain level of standard. However, that’s only one way to make use of quality control. Quality control also allows you to deeply study your manufacturing chain. Knowing where things are breaking down means being able to fix the problems. More importantly, it means being able to improve the manufacturing chain. These minor improvements can easily serve as a strong foundation for future improvements.
 

Five ways to improve quality control in manufacturing

1. Study your manufacturing chain.
Your manufacturing chain is the heart of your company. To have an effective quality control system in place, you need to know every aspect of how you assemble your products. Understanding this process is essential in being able to optimize and improve the final product. Likewise, having a deep understanding of the process allows you to find ways to streamline and raise the level of quality of your manufacturing chain. The only way to ensure quality control does its job is by having a strong foundation already in place.

2.  Properly train your employees.
No matter how effective your quality control system is, it’s useless without skilled employees. Properly training your employees is essential in manufacturing. Things are no different when it comes to quality control. Your employees need to be able to identify and resolve the problems that your quality control system exposes. Not only that, they also need to understand why it’s important to focus on quality control. And the closer your employees are to the actual production chain, the more important it becomes. Furthermore, having properly trained employees makes it a lot easier to change things in the future.

3. Make use of statistics.
One of the strongest strengths of quality control is the versatility of how you can implement different systems. Using statistics, for example, is a great way of improving the final result of your products. Acceptance sampling or quality control charts, for example, are easy to implement and provide a strong form of quality control. These and other methods that utilize statistics are usually cheaper and easier to implement than more traditional inspection methods. What makes statistic-based quality control great, however, is that there are methods that focus on the end product as well as the actual processes.

4. Regularly test your systems.
One of the best ways of improving quality control is to make sure that your equipment is performing effectively and optimally. One of the most useful ways to check that your equipment is working at 100% is through randomized testing. By holding unscheduled tests, quality control can be measured, as well as how effectively employees are following safety protocols. As a result, the importance of employee safety can be reinforced throughout your workforce. Aside from improving the safety of your employees, these random tests also help to improve how well your employees can efficiently do their jobs.

5. Understand which methods work best.
Because quality control contains many different methods, it’s essential that you understand which method is best for your specific manufacturing process. Perishables like food, for example, require a 100% inspection method in order to comply with many stringent regulations. However, the nature of this method makes it highly expensive. Knowing which quality control method is best suited to your business is essential.
 

Better quality control leads to better products

When it comes to manufacturing, the quality of the final product is the cornerstone of any business. By improving your quality control, you ensure that the products you produce are worth your customer’s time and money. By spending the extra resources necessary to improve your quality control, you open up the path to continued success.