When we give a business our custom, unless it’s an artisan business, we expect products to be the same every time. If my friend buys a chair from IKEA, and I buy that same chair, those two chairs should be almost identical, apart from natural variations in the wood.
We expect standardization and quality. The product should be free of defects and work as expected; otherwise, we’ll soon return it to the company for a refund. We trust businesses that represent quality.
Maintaining quality in your business is a key element of success and growth, especially if you manufacture products or provide a service, which almost all businesses are. Keeping standards high and guaranteeing consistency in your products enables you to deliver an excellent customer experience and earn a reputation for high standards.
Finding some way to measure quality before that product is sent out to customers is crucial for improving efficiency and improving your reputation.
What Is Quality Control?
A business sets internal standards or adheres to external standards and measures the extent to which a product or service meets them. This is also known as quality control. Quality control takes place at many points during the manufacturing process or service delivery and allows the business to identify and remove defects to ensure a consistent end product.
Businesses use quality control to meet established standards and assess, maintain, and increase product quality for greater customer happiness. The two goals of quality control are to make products as consistent as possible and minimize defects. Quality control is a rigorous process conducted by specialist employees trained in the testing process.
Quality control is why it is relatively rare for a business to need to recall products because they have already been tested and defective products removed.
Key Components of Quality Control
Quality Control in business ensures that products meet specified standards before reaching customers. In this process, documentation plays a critical role in every stage of the QC process by providing clarity, traceability, and compliance.
Examine products to detect defects and ensure compliance
The quality control team should examine every product during different manufacturing stages to identify defects and ensure compliance with industry standards. This ensures a high-quality product free from errors that satisfy customer’s expectations.
Conduct tests to assess performance and functionality
Test the products to see whether they work as intended and take steps to correct any deviations. These tests should be standardized and analyze the product under normal use, under normal conditions, as you would expect them to be used. Testing the product in a real-world scenario is important.
Keep detailed documentation and records
Documentation is key to the quality control process. Keep accurate records of every test and any actions taken to correct defects to increase accountability and document the process. Documentation makes your documentation process much more rigorous and repeatable, so you can increase learning across the organization.
Implement corrective measures to address and prevent quality issues
When you encounter defects, take steps to correct them and prevent them from happening again so the quality of your process increases. Improve your manufacturing process so you are less likely to encounter defects in future products, saving time and effort on future corrections.
Provide employees with the knowledge to maintain quality standards
Adequately train your employees to implement the quality control process and maintain high standards. This includes taking steps to improve the quality control process itself and stressing the importance of regularly conducting tests so that no defect escapes the factory.
Constantly analyze data and feedback
Analyze the performance of your quality-control tests and gather feedback on the process so that you can regularly improve. Check where you’re going wrong and use data about the tests to identify whether you’re encountering more errors than usual, then think about how you can fix that.
Why Is Quality Control Important?
Quality Control is essential for any business because it ensures products meet defined standards, leading to customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and regulatory compliance.
Increase customer loyalty and satisfaction by meeting customer expectations
When customers consistently receive a high standard of product that meets their expectations, this increases their loyalty and satisfaction. Just think of the world’s most successful companies like Apple – when customers buy an iPhone, they know it will work just like every other iPhone. You can then compete on brand quality because customers associate your brand with good products.
Detect issues early to prevent defects
The earlier you can detect issues, the better, because you can prevent more defective products from being manufactured. You can take steps to improve the manufacturing process early on.
Reduce overall production cost
Preventing errors and inconsistencies speeds up the pace of production and reduces the costs of raw materials and labor hours spent in making the products. Quality control makes the production line more efficient because you spend less time and cost on remaking products, shipping only those products you can sell.
Ensures industry standards and regulatory requirements
Many industries are highly regulated and quality control helps ensure your products meet these standards. If you can earn certifications that indicate your product is of a certain quality then this will be a big selling point for customers, potentially increasing your profits.
Encourages a culture of continuous improvement
Quality control encourages your business to improve by making products better and meeting higher quality standards. If quality control is embedded into your culture then you will always be looking for ways to raise standards. Your whole business then becomes about making improvements everywhere you can.
Improves production efficiency and resource use
Quality control allows you to waste less time and resources on defective products, making your business more efficient. You spend more time on producing the products that you are actually going to sell and make a profit on.
Also Read: Quality Assurance Guidelines: A Definitive Guide
Steps to Implement Quality Control Process
Implementing a Quality Control process requires a structured approach to ensure products or services consistently meet quality standards. Here are the key steps to implement an effective QC process:
Choose where to start
There are many areas of a business that you can improve, and you can start by going back to your mission statement. Are there any areas where your products are failing to meet the standards you have set yourself? For example, have you had to recall a particular product? You could start your quality control process by improving this product and ensuring it meets specifications.
Set the standards
Quality control only works if you know the standards you set yourself to meet. This could be consistency in service quality, or responsiveness in service time. You need parameters that allow you to measure whether your product is successful – that is, meets quality standards. These standards will be rigorously enforced when testing your product or service.
Test every step of the process
When you’ve defined your process, you need to test whether it works using different members of staff to see how it holds up in practice. Do a test run to see if your process works when someone new to the team carries it out. Test many times to ensure you have a large body of sample data for your quality control process.
Identify and correct the problems
The purpose of your quality control test is to identify and correct problems. Issues can always be rectified in any manufacturing or service process. Carry out your tests to see where your products need improvements, then make the changes as required.
Collect real-world data and create reports
Analyze data relating to your quality control tests so you can see how your business is performing. Is there a reduction in errors since you implemented the quality control process? Are your quality controllers getting faster at performing tests? Reporting on the data will allow you to celebrate improvements and identify areas that could be better.
Document and share your findings
Documentation is critical to the quality control process. Documentation allows you to share best practices and learnings, and store your quality control processes somewhere safe. Document360 is knowledge-based software that you can use to document quality control and ensure that processes can be replicated by anyone in the organization. You can store reports and results from tests so anyone can look back on the data any time they need insight.
Also Read: Guide to Manufacturing Work Instructions in Simple Terms
Conclusion
Quality control is an important part of maintaining standards with products and services, contributing to your business’s improved reputation and customer following. It makes good business sense to maintain and improve quality to increase competitiveness and market share when your business becomes known for providing quality products and services.
Documenting your quality control processes with a product like Document360 is crucial in ensuring your processes are passed on to the right people. Quality control is a team effort and everyone needs to be involved in improving products.
Quality control prevents you from having to recall products and lowers refund requests, maintaining your standards in the eyes of your customers. There is less waste, more efficiency, and a more successful business.
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Frequently Asked Questions
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Why is documentation important in the quality control process?
Documentation is important for passing on knowledge to other team members and helping you repeat the quality control process. It registers processes that have already been carried out and records the results, including any action taken to improve product quality.
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What types of documents are essential in quality control?
Checklists – a way of representing processes so that anyone can carry them out by following the steps. Lessons Learned Log – a document that contains the outcome of a process and used to improve future tasks.
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How can documentation improve the QC process?
Documentation can improve the QC process by reproducing lessons learned and ensuring knowledge is captured for future reference.
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Who is responsible for maintaining QC documentation?
Anyone who carries out a quality control process is responsible for maintaining documentation for the benefit of the team.