Quality control is imperative for manufacturing businesses. Providing your customers with excellence – and safety – is nothing short of critical, and the only way to ensure you are delivering the goods at all times is to focus on maintaining quality control.
The trouble is, it’s one of those areas of manufacturing that can sometimes get swept away in place of getting products out of the door and keeping a tight control on costs. But make no mistake about it – QC testing will save your production business a lot of trouble, and it needn’t cost you a fortune.
Let’s take a look at some of the things you can do to improve quality control in your business without increasing your costs.
Process checking
The first task is to make sure you know exactly how things work on your factory floor or production line. Everything, from the steps it takes to create a product to the smallest pieces of machinery you use, needs to be checked. Are there necessary steps being missed by employees? Is the equipment you are using well maintained and working as efficiently as it can? There are likely to be improvements to be made at almost every point of the production process, and defining your processes is the first step in revealing where these might be.
Hiring programs
Next, think about the people you are hiring to work on the production. Are you taking the cheap route and avoiding paying for experience and skill? If so, there’s a good chance your quality control checks will uncover some issues. The fact is that competence is vital, and you have to hire workers who know and understand what they are doing. Make sure you are providing training for any staff members who are struggling and create a culture where employees pass on valuable skills to their colleagues.
The right tools
There is a huge range of instruments you can use to automate your QC checks or make things a lot easier. Moisture gauges, safety testing equipment, heating and cleaning devices – the list is endless. All manufacturing businesses are different of course, but linking the right tools with the right quality control systems will ease a lot of your pain and remove the need for manual inspections. So, while you might end up spending in the short-term, you will be saving on resources in the long-term.
Cleanliness
Be honest – how clean is your plant or production factory? It doesn’t matter whether you are producing kids toys or gourmet foods – all raw materials will leave residue on your equipment and machinery and need to be cleaned correctly. Doing so will help you prevent serious issues like cross-contamination.
Final checks
Finally, make sure that you have a robust checking process in place before you send out each batch for delivery. It’s the last chance you will get before your products arrive in the hands of your customers. You don’t have to check everything, of course, but you should be looking at testing reasonable percentages of every product line, for safety, consistency, and quality.