5 Proven Strategies For Manufacturers To Enhance Quality Control
When it comes to improving quality control in manufacturing, you must proactively approach each part of the process and ensure that any challenges or bottlenecks regarding quality concerns are dealt with quickly and efficiently.
A breakdown in quality control can have disastrous effects on your business as a whole, including increased wastage, overheads, and loss of customers. To reduce this, this post looks at some of the ways you can streamline your quality control process for higher standards across the board.
Build Proper Processes
Before you do anything else, you need to look at the existing processes you have in place. Are they working for you? What are the outputs, how long is it taking to complete each part, and where are the most issues occurring?
Once you have identified your process chain and any issues you are having, you can analyze it thoroughly and implement the required changes.
To help you rebuild better processes, it can be beneficial to use automation. Automation technology can be trained to look for defects faster than the human eye and allow for fewer products to get through that can be of a lower quality or contain defects. Automation can also help with loading and unloading conveyors into the correct sections at different stages of completion and alert you of potential issues and backlogs at any point.
Keep It Clean
You can’t expect to maintain high levels of quality if you are working in a messy, unorganized, or dirty space. Ensure that all areas adhere to strict cleaning and organization rules, allowing easier access to tools and equipment and fewer opportunities for contamination or interference with machinery.
Implement daily cleaning routines and property inspections of equipment for regular servicing and maintenance to reduce the likelihood of breakdowns. If this isn’t something you can take care of in-house, hiring expert cleaning companies who can carry this out for you can be beneficial.
Ensure Correct Training Is Given
To maintain higher standards of quality control and efficiency, you need to ensure you are training all employees to the highest standards for each aspect of their job role. There’s no way around this, but if your employees aren’t trained or qualified to do the role they have been hired for, you are doing yourself a disservice. Not being able to identify defects, causes for concern, or problems in the process or equipment can lead to a catastrophic breakdown at each point in the process.
Start by identifying the specific skills each employee requires, what skills and training they already possess, and put a comprehensive training plan in place to ensure standards are being met consistently.
Utilise Latest Technology
Technology has revolutionized almost every aspect of running any business, manufacturing included. There is a wealth of technology available for manufacturers to be able to improve how they operate, how they design and create their products and the level of quality control they carry out.
Much like automation mentioned above, A can be instrumental in allowing some of the pressure to be taken off employees and allow for a higher level of inspection to be carried out.
Tools such as 3D printing and using a ReDeTec ProtoCycler can help you to cut down on waste associated with manufacturing and material used; collaboration technology and IoT can help to improve internal communications, and more accessible implementing of tasks and reporting of issues and safety solutions can preempt anything going wrong before it happens it allows you to make changes and avoid loss in production and revenue.
Embrace Lean Manufacturing
Lean manufacturing is one of the most effective ways to improve quality control. Lean manufacturing is a continuous process that eliminates waste and maximizes efficiency.
By carrying this out, you can streamline production and refine your process to achieve optimal production lines and increased quality control measures.
To start, you will need to identify areas of waste in production and workflows. This can be holding excessive inventory, having outdated admin systems and controls that hinder the process, or inefficient equipment that isn’t as reliable as you need it to be. Once you have identified any problems, you can implement changes. Kanban boards, for example, can help you work through your process and better understand what is and isn’t working to implement the necessary changes.
Conclusion
Ensuring you adhere to only the highest standards when carrying quality control will enable you to optimize your manufacturing process and work to a higher standard with minimal mistakes, less waste, and more efficiency and productivity. These strategies can help you make the necessary changes and get on the right path.
