More and more companies now view quality assurance as an essential and strategic part of their enterprise system. Whereas before it was a bonus to have quality management systems in place, they now realize it is an absolute necessity if they want to reach their greater business goals.
Companies are not willing to risk paying the cost of poor quality by putting their reputation on the line. Therefore, manufacturing organizations are increasingly developing their enterprise systems architecture with quality at the core, and integrating in MES, or Manufacturing Execution System and PLM, or Product Lifecycle Management, applications, visibility, collection and analysis.
No longer solely a production or a plant initiative, quality management is now evolving to an enterprise systems landscape on numerous levels. Quality assurance has become a common business process that crosses the boundaries of ERP, MES and engineering systems forcing them to work together in one coherent flow.
In this global economy, companies are choosing to outsource suppliers on a larger scale, and it has become more crucial to have a centralized quality system. Having one consistent process, one set of consistent metrics, and one history method improves the ability to make better management decisions among partners. A global quality management system provides more visibility and oversight of these outsourced suppliers, thereby ensuring on time product delivery.
Quality management also helps make sure that what the operations and suppliers actually build matches the expectations of what the engineers designed, thereby ensuring nothing gets lost or altered in the translation. The quality management system is extremely valuable in managing risk in the supply chain, improving stability, standardizing metrics and analytics, and improving reaction time to problems.
As evidenced by recent major recalls of food and toy products manufactured in China and autos manufactured in North America, consumers associate quality problems with the brand that is on the label, regardless of whether the fault lies with the prime manufacturer, or with a sub tier supplier. There can be a significant upstream impact for companies that fail to recognize this.
The problems that can evolve from the lack of a strong quality system include the brand erosion we just discussed, loss of revenue or market share, potential recalls and lawsuits, and higher warranty costs. The lack of traceability across outsourced manufacturing also limits the ability of a company to track true product performance and see where strengths and weaknesses lie in the entire process. Not being able to connect the dots back to the source of the problem and figure out which tier of suppliers is really driving up the costs of time and labor for an organization.
Traditionally, organizations have generally operated in separate silos, one for manufacturing, one for R
About the author of this article:
ibaset is a leading provider of high tech software solutions and services. learn more about enterprise manufacturing solutions in their recorded webcast entitled tying engineering, quality and operations into one global quality management system.
