Businesses are faced with increased demand for quality products, supply chain disruptions – and not to mention strict regulations. In an increasingly competitive world, it’s important to understand the value of good product quality as a manufacturer. After all, in many cases, your customers don’t need to shop with you and will be able to replace you if they are dissatisfied with the quality standard or service.
What Is Production Quality?
The definition of production quality can vary quite a bit, but it is usually defined and measured as the level of excellence in a given product. In other words, whether or not the end-product conforms to the documented – or mutually agreed – specifications and has passed the acceptance level of defects within a given batch.
Why Is Quality in Production Important?
Quality in production is important to all types of businesses and it is often the driving force behind their success.
Ensuring quality in the production comes with many benefits, including:
- A decrease in cost from less defective or recalled products.
- Higher customer satisfaction.
- Better brand reputation.
- Minimized waste in the production line.
How Do You Ensure the Quality of Products?
Quality manufacturing is crucial for every product, especially in today’s dynamic market where consumers are more educated and desire quality products. But achieving top quality in manufacturing and production not only means delivering a faultless and fully functional product or service. But it also refers to limiting the amount of waste, financial costs, and lost labor hours in your supply chain.
So, how are we going to apply the procedure to ensure quality products? There are many ways to ensure quality production. First, you’ll need a well-rounded approach to quality management – and it’s not just the management team or quality manager who has to pay and retain close attention to maintaining standards; the whole team has to be on board and pulling in the same direction.
How to Ensure Quality Production: 5 Steps
1. Establish Productivity and Quality Plans Across the Team
A one-team mindset will go a long way in ensuring you’re on the right track to your destination and goals when it comes to manufacturing quality. You can’t apply a quality production plan on your own. It’s going to take everyone’s sleeves being rolled up and all hands-on deck.
To implement positive changes in your processes, the plan needs to be understood and put into action on a daily basis together. Involving all job titles and parts of your team and company will mean everything is covered. You need a variety of opinions and perspectives to ensure you’ve considered all outcomes and instances that could occur. History and experience of the process and any changes need to be observed and acknowledged. Only by including everyone can improvements continue to be made.
2. Understand the Importance of Product Quality to Consumers
How can you make something better if you don’t have any experience of what is actually the best?
Customers are in the pilot seat when it comes to product usage and more often than not know why they rate a particular product and don’t like or use others. By investing more, you can of course make a product better, or at least believe you are making it better.
It makes sense, however, to put yourself or someone in your business in the customer’s position to try and truly understand where they are coming from. Sales or marketing personnel are often great for this. Try to meet their requirements and provide constructive input to make your product better at minimum cost.
3. Calculate the Cost of Poor Quality Calculation
Ideally, you don’t want to hear about defects in your product range from the customer once they’ve received it. By the time your product gets to market, these issues should have been identified and dealt with through your quality control and management.
Not only is it bad for your brand reputation and customer satisfaction, but defects can cost a significant amount more once they have been delivered. Your staff needs to understand that warranty repairs and product replacements should be avoided where possible because they cost more than if they were dealt with early on. It’s a good idea for the whole team to get into the habit of identifying problems by looking at the root cause.
4. Fully Overcome Problems
When issues are found in your production line and supply chain, it’s important that they are rectified and overcome completely rather than just dealt with temporarily. Fixing the symptoms is often thought of as solving a problem, but the underlying issues will remain and more than likely eventually resurface which will cause more disruption.
There are a few methods to ensure quality and smooth production, including:
- Adding inspections and rework steps and stations to help fix defects.
- Provide training sessions to help everyone understand the causes and solutions.
- Improve production quality and optimize processes by the Six Sigma in quality management.
- Carry out tests to control the ability to turn problems on and off in your production process and solutions created as a result to eradicate the issue
Keep Production Quality Standards and Discipline High
At every step of the production process, you need to ensure high levels of discipline and quality standards. Your approach and thoroughness will depend on the kind of product you’re making or what manufacturing business you are in. Letting your standards slip or direction digress could have big repercussions.
Too much bureaucracy can, of course, hinder innovation, but you need to maintain an element of structure and organization to be consistent and deliver according to schedule and specifications. But implementing control phases in production can be both time-consuming and costly. One way to do this is to involve independent third-party quality control companies like HQTS to inspect or monitor the factory during crucial moments, such as during production or before the products are shipped.
Conclusion: 5 Ways to Ensure Production Quality in Manufacturing
Manufacturers are under pressure to meet the increasing production quality standards that are often set by end-customers requirements, government regulations, and fierce competition. As a result, these days, it’s important to maintain a high level of production quality.
We’ve outlined five key ways to ensure quality production in manufacturing businesses, ranging from involving all stakeholders in the quality planning, calculating and understanding the cost of poor quality – to fixing the root causes of the problem.
HQTS is one of the leading companies in quality assurance, with over 25+ years of experience of helping companies inspect the quality of their goods. Do you need help with overcoming quality issues or improving relationships with suppliers across Asia? Contact us today.
