Inspection Management and Quality : Understanding the Core Metrics

Inspection is the most critical activity to ensure product quality. It involves measuring, examining, and testing all the aspects of product quality that can impact the product’s functionality and performance. It is significantly important for achieving customer satisfaction and maintaining brand reputation too.

To understand the core metrics of inspection management and quality, we will firstly explore different types of quality inspections.

What are Different Types of Quality Inspections?

Primarily, the quality inspections are categorized into three types, namely – Pre-production Inspection, In-line inspection, and Final inspection. The core objective is inspecting all the critical details so to ensure timely and effective resolution of the quality problems identified.

Pre-Production Inspection

As the names itself specifies, the pre-production inspections generally take care of quality of raw materials. All the raw materials are thoroughly checked to qualify for entering the production phase to prevent wastage and recalls. The pre-production inspections may include checking the weight and other dimensions of the product components and embellishments, stability factors, recovery states, pile retention, torqueing, and many more to comply with the internal as well as regulatory requirements.

In most of the scenarios, the quality issues are nothing but the result of defected raw materials. Inspections at the very beginning enables auditors and quality managers to address quality issues before the production start. It helps them avoid sudden failures that could further leads to increased overhead expenses and unnecessary delays.  

In-Line Inspection

Once the production starts, the criticality of the inspections increases. Some enterprises don’t have structured approach for in-line inspections, which might hold them back from achieving business goals in a timely manner. Regardless of the product or service you offer, it is imperative to conduct in-line inspections to identify the quality issues that could lead to catastrophic events in the later phase. For example – if a connector is not fitted correctly into a medical equipment, it may lead to functional issues.

In-line inspections are extremely important to prevent such issues. If you can identify such incidents within the production cycle, you have enough time and resources to get it fixed before delivery. But once such product gets delivered, you are likely to invite many other risks including life-risks for the user. Even a minor issue during the production cycle can invite major issues in the final stage.

Related Article: A Quick Guide to Understand AQL for Inspections

Final Inspection

The final level inspection is the final opportunity for the auditors and quality managers to identify and resolve the quality issues before the product reaches to the customer. In the final inspection, products are checked against the specific requirements – be it appearance, sizing, fits, or its intended function.

Enterprises, brands, and retailers often skip the step of final inspection when the products are still in stock and there is a chance to prevent any harm to the customer. After the final production stage, the product gets released from the stockroom and it may get too late to do any correction. It further results into poor quality product delivery and can also harm your brand reputation.

Therefore, inspections are the best way to ensure the quality deliverables while allowing you to take informed decisions for business success.

Related Article: Inspection in Manufacturing Processes: Why It is Important

Inspection Management and Quality: The Core Metrics

It is clearly evident that inspection management and quality are inter-related. It would be really helpful for enterprises to understand their core metrics to implement right practices, procedures and tools for achieving their business goals and competitive advantage.

1. Customer Satisfaction

“Your marketing plan is not as important as how you plan to invest in the happiness of your customers.”

If you have implemented right inspections practices and ensured quality of the products and services, you are likely to achieve customer satisfaction. The only thing that matters to your customer is your products/services to solve their problems as promised. If not, your support and services team will be piled up with customer complaints. You may even end up losing many customers and their trust on your brand.

The best solution could be a smart inspection management system that can help streamline and standardize the inspection processes throughout the production cycle. The software ensures that your inspectors are using the correct standard and characteristics for each product since it offers a centralized platform to manage the sample plan, sample size, acceptance threshold and related documents for each lot to be inspected. It allows you to manage the inspection process smoothly and efficiently, ensuring compliance.

2. Brand Reputation

“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.” – Jeff Bezos.

And inspection is all about ensuring that you are doing things well. Verifying the product quality before its release to customers can protect your brand reputation effortlessly as they say, “happy customers are best form of advertisement”.  Best practices for inspection and quality management demonstrates your brand’s commitment to quality, helping you to build a loyal customer base.

A cloud-based Inspection Management Software helps you gain more control of product quality from anywhere across the globe, providing you a centralized platform to collaborate with your team for critical business decisions. Right and informed decisions at right time can work wonders for your brand reputation.

3. On-Time Delivery

“Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.” – Peter Drucker.

So, why waste time with the traditional inspection management practices that are no longer efficient and effective? You can save the administration time for your inspection and quality management processes by utilizing a comprehensive quality management system. It will help you take a holistic approach to product and process quality management, ensuring timely deliverables to customers.

On-time product/service delivery reflects the culture of quality in an organization wherein every process is streamlined and standardized so well that there are lesser chances of unnecessary delays. It will further impact your business goals of achieving customer satisfaction and enhancing brand reputation.

So, how you are keeping up with these core metrics? Still using the traditional on-site quality and inspection management systems? if yes, you are likely to miss a lot of business opportunities. Instead, you can use the advanced cloud-based software solutions to manage your quality management and inspection management processes much more efficiently than ever.

The cloud-based software can firmly stand against the test of time while enabling you to comply with the increasing regulatory challenges and customer expectations. Needless to worry, when you have Qualityze EQMS suite to standardize your inspection management and quality management processes. It not only helps you to monitor suppliers and materials related risks for defining a suitable sampling system, but also helps to create a closed-loop quality system for seamless operations.

Related Article : Inspection Management and Quality : Understanding the Core Metrics

Conclusion:

The quality of a product depends on how effective, robust, and reliable your inspection management process is during its design and manufacturing stage. Thanks to the next-generation quality management systems like Qualityze that allows you to manage all your quality related processes right from inspection management to customer complaints’ resolution in a streamlined manner.

If you also want to standardize your quality and inspection management processes, get in touch with the Qualityze Customer Success team on 1-877-207-8616 or write us at info@qualityze.com, and we will be right there for you. We assure the smarter quality solutions for all your quality management needs.