Quality Management: 9 Important Functions of Inspection That Matter

Purpose of Inspection in Quality Management

Inspections are critical to ensure consistent product quality, primarily when relying on third-party suppliers or manufacturers for raw materials. Some businesses often consider inspection as a final quality check before the product gets delivered to the customer. If you have a similar approach, you may experience an increased number of product recalls.

It is time you should have a fresh take on it. You must conduct inspections at every stage of production that starts right from raw materials coming from the suppliers or vendors. You will be surprised to see – how many products recalls and resource wastage you would have avoided. It also saves time you used to invest in managing product recalls. Most importantly, it lowers the chances of workplace injuries.

In recent research, it has been observed that inspections can help decline workplace injury rates by 9.4% and injury costs by 26%.

Do you still believe that investing in inspections is not worthy?

Realizing the worth and potential of inspections is just the first step. You must understand that inspection is a comprehensive process that involves nine significant functions.

Related Topic - Inspection in Manufacturing Processes: Why It is Important

9 Important Functions of Quality Inspection Management

1. Documenting product quality standards to be referenced at the time of Inspections

Documentation is an essential part of quality management processes. It guides your quality teams, suppliers, and auditors through the product quality standards that need to be followed during quality checks, inspections, and audits. Documenting all the quality management activities also demonstrates your organization’s commitment to best practices and quality culture.

2. Developing easy-to-understand and follow inspections workflows

Inspection workflows should be simple so that your inspection team requires minimal training. You can get Inspection Management Software with configurable workflows. The simplicity of the inspection workflow will significantly improve your team’s productivity and reduce the inspection process cycle time.

3. Defining the containment procedures for products quality issues that can be fixed by reworking

Not every product recall requires extensive efforts. Some of the product quality issues can be easily fixed by reworking. It will help you avoid wastage of resources. All you need to do is define the containment procedures for such products. You can also categorize quality issues for easy segregation. Wouldn’t you be interested in preventing unnecessary wastage of resources and money?

4. Calibrating the inspection equipment and devices at regular intervals to ensure error-free inspections

Just like the production equipment, you must calibrate the inspection equipment. It will help maintain the accuracy and efficiency of the equipment. It will eventually help maintain consistency in product quality. Next time when you schedule the calibration activity, make sure you have included the inspection equipment in the list.

5. Streamlining inspection process at source to reduce scrap and low-quality products

As we have already discussed before, some businesses consider inspections as a final product quality check. It is high time businesses should rethink their inspection processes. Streamlining inspections right from the start can help to reduce the scrap and low-quality products. Furthermore, it will help them protect brand reputation and increased overhead expenses due to compliance lawsuits, workplace injuries, or any catastrophic event.

6. Training the inspection teams on the best practices to manage production challenges

Regulatory requirements are getting stringent with time. Businesses continuously need to train their employees on these requirements to perform their job more effectively and efficiently. You can utilize cloud-based training management software to provide your team a flexible training environment even when working remotely.

7. Reporting incidents and their action plan to management

You must report the incidents and the action plan implemented to the management; it will help them make informed business decisions. It will also help them streamline and modify the existing inspection processes and practices.

8. Standardizing inspections for pre, post, and inline production in adherence to compliance requirements

Standardizing inspections for every stage of production in adherence to applicable regulatory standards ensures minimal compliance issues. It also fosters a culture of quality and continuous improvements in the organization, enabling you to attain business goals efficiently.

9. Ensuring the inspection process changes have minimal or no impact on production cycle time

Establishing inspection processes is not a one-time job. It requires continuous improvements even in the processes to ensure the best quality outcomes. However, the changes are not easy to implement. You can leverage the next-generation change management software to make change implementation efficient and straightforward. The software can help you standardize the change process, so there is a minimal or no impact on the ongoing operations.

Managing all the inspection-related functions can be challenging, especially when the production volume is high.

So, what is the solution?

Qualityze Inspection Management Software is your one-stop solution to manage all your inspection-related processes while meeting compliance. Qualityze Inspection Management enables end-to-end process management of incoming, pre-shipment, and production inspections while managing compliance risks. It fosters a culture of continuous improvement. Its advanced reporting tools provide quality teams better visibility on inspections while ensuring conformance of incoming material or components with the latest standards and guidelines.

Related Topics: 11 Reasons You Must Upgrade to an Inspection Management Software

With Qualityze Inspection Management, you can

• Define Sample Plan and Inspection Standard
• Streamline Incoming, In-Process, or Outgoing Inspection
• Mitigate Supplier Risks
• Integrate Inspections with Existing IT eco-system
• Store Inspection Records and Data on Centralized and Secure Cloud Platform.

Benefits of Inspection Management Software

When you use Inspection Management Software, you can leverage the following benefits:

• You can quickly identify and segregate the defective raw materials before they are processed for production.
• You can easily detect the production issues with inline inspections before it leads to product failure or any catastrophic event.
• You can inform the management of product failures in time to take necessary corrective and preventive actions.
• You can prevent the low-quality or substandard products from reaching the customers, which will reduce the complaints.
• You can maintain a good brand reputation for ensuring the quality, safety, and reliability of the products.
• You can build a closed-loop system to connect all the quality processes and gain more control over product quality.
• You can leverage more visibility and traceability of product quality trends to make informed decisions.
• You can collaborate with your teams in real-time to conduct inspections real quick.
• You can help improve supplier quality and performance by sharing key insights into product quality.
• You can use Severity based sampling plan for more stringent inspection.
• You can generate NC for the samples that failed the inspection criteria.
• You can evaluate the material reinspection needs.

Related Article - The Power of Safety Inspections: How to Keep Your Employees Safe

Conclusion

Inspection means careful evaluation. The primary objective of inspections is meeting customer requirements and preventing defective products from being distributed. It is undeniable that some of the product defects cannot be checked or fixed at the final production stage. Therefore, you must conduct inspections at every step to minimize the chances of product failure. It saves time and overhead expenses.

For streamlining inspections, you can utilize an integrated Inspection Management Software like Qualityze. It is a cloud-based solution that helps standardize inspection processes to meet applicable regulatory compliance while eliminating product quality and supplier risks at the initial stages of production. It comes with all the advanced capabilities you need to make the inspection processes efficient than before.

For more information, please contact our customer success team at +1-877-207-8616 or email us at info@qualityze.com, and we will be there for you.