Four Software Solutions for Product Quality in Manufacturing

Summary

In 1983, a scientific article published in Harvard Business Review stated: "Quality is more than making a good product." In the article, Professors Hirotaka Takeuchi and John Quelch highlighted that providing goods with better technical characteristics at a lower price is no longer enough to meet customer expectations of product quality.

Even 40 years ago, customers considered such distinctive factors as styling, a company's support level and warranty terms when assessing the quality of a product. The maxim emphasized in the article seems even more valid in 2024, since customers' perception of quality has evolved and become more complex over the years.

In this context, ensuring high product quality has become not only more critical but also more challenging for manufacturers. Let's look at four types of manufacturing software that can help manufacturers drive product quality and enhance customer satisfaction.

Four solutions for ensuring product quality in manufacturing

1. Quality management system (QMS)
The most apparent and promising option for manufacturing companies aiming to improve product quality is the implementation of a quality management system. A QMS helps companies document and manage quality processes and ensure that the product is free of defects and complies with internal quality standards.

The main advantage of this software is that QMS allows manufacturers to identify potential problems before they start affecting product quality. Depending on what data sources are integrated with QMS, the system can automatically track various events (such as customer complaints or production nonconformities) to alert quality managers and thus help mitigate product quality issues on the fly.

Useful features:

• Corrective and preventive actions (CAPA) management to identify and solve root problems with product performance
• ISO standards management to integrate compliance standards, such ISO 9000, ISO 13485, and IATF 16949, into the manufacturing process and regulate product quality in line with them
• Inspection management to plan and optimize pre-production, in-production, and pre-shipment inspections and audits

• Tagging and barcoding to increase product traceability and visibility across a company’s supply chain 
• Multi-warehouse synchronization to help large manufacturing companies track thousands of SKUs across multiple warehouses
• Inventory analytics to understand which products sell better and determine how much revenue they generate while identifying products that remain unsold

3. Human resource management system (HRM)
HRMs help a company recruit more qualified talent and conduct tailored upskilling programs to expand employees’ skill sets. More skilled employees can operate complex machines, such as 3D printers or robots, which helps companies create more high-quality or sophisticated products that serve the customer better.

In addition, HR managers can use HRM to increase employee loyalty and motivation by collecting their feedback, providing them with growth opportunities within organizations, and helping them feel that their work matters to a company's success. In turn, motivated and satisfied employees are more likely to share their ideas on improving a product and contribute to its quality.

Useful features:

• Performance tracking to accurately assess the professional level of employees and highlight areas for improvement
• Transfer management to allocate employees to more suitable work positions and thereby increase their efficiency
• Incentive management to motivate the most valuable employees with extra pay, time off, and other rewards

• VR training to simulate real production scenarios in an immersive and safe environment
• Personalized learning to increase training engagement and encourage employees’ personal growth
• Reporting and analytics to improve training programs continuously

How to define product quality in 2024 and beyond

• Aesthetics - how a product is perceived via the human senses, with such factors as products’ smell, appearance, sound, or taste playing a key role 
• Durability - the period of time a product can serve the customer and provide value·        
• Ease of use - the simplicity of using a product, as well as its comprehensibility
• Features - additional aspects and product functionalities whose primary purpose is to attract customers (a self-emptying feature in a vacuum cleaner, a vacation mode in a refrigerator, etc.)
• Performance - key technical characteristics, such as vehicle speed, phone RAM, or TV resolution
• Reliability - uninterrupted product operation and the likelihood of its breakdown
• Serviceability - ease of maintenance and repair, as well as the quality of product support provided by a manufacturer or a vendor
• Material - the reliability and durability of the material used to build a product

Final thoughts

Creating high-quality products is the key to increasing customer satisfaction and remaining competitive for manufacturers across different sectors. However, since customers perceive quality as a combination of factors rather than just technical or physical characteristics, ensuring product quality is a multi-faceted task for manufacturers.

Companies can improve the quality of their products by implementing various types of manufacturing software, including QMS, IMS, LMS, and HRM. In addition, a company can consider developing the tools from scratch and tailoring them to its unique workflows to increase the software’s efficiency. Professional developers can help companies handle such projects end-to-end, from specifying software requirements and designing its UX and UI to engineering and deploying the final solution.