When working with us to handle and improve your manufacturing project, we commonly provide a customized Quality Assurance program for you covering all of the QA/QC activities that fit your project’s needs.
As we often tell our clients, everything impacts product quality. If you want to minimize your risks, you need to follow a set of good practices that fall into 3 categories: planning, control, and improvement. It is all linked in a logical way:
Note: this is not applicable for clients who buy off-the-shelf products and only need a few inspections.
Here’s an example of one of our programs for an electro-mechanical product. While the program may vary from client to client, you can see that we follow a logical process in order to control quality and improve processes at each stage of production:
- Defining product requirements
- Planning for compliance, quality, safety, and reliability
- Monitoring during production
- Process improvement
Note that we make it clear who is responsible for each activity.
Notes: We assumed in this plan that the client already decided what manufacturer to work with. Screening & qualifying potential manufacturers is often a separate plan in itself. Also, the example shown is for an electro-mechanical product so the program would be different for automotive parts, garments, food products, etc.
A Quality Assurance program provides the following benefits:
- Know what your greatest risks are.
- Address each of these risks by mitigating them and adding controls where needed.
- Take preventive measures such as defining product specifications, clarifying your standard and explaining it to the factory staff, finding weaknesses in your product’s designs, documenting a process control plan, etc.
- Learn from issues found and implement measures to prevent recurrence in the future.
- Keep pressure on your suppliers so they don’t ‘forget’ any important topic.
If you are about to buy an existing product in a small quantity (keeping a low financial exposure), arranging a QA program like this is probably overkill. Keep your orders small, keep the incentives right through favorable payment terms if possible, define your specifications, and have each order inspected. It can be simple.
However, if you are trying to set up a supply chain that can support you for years to come, especially if you develop new products, setting up and following a QA program does make sense. The objective is to prevent some very expensive mistakes.
Once you give us the context of your manufacturing project, we can suggest a Quality Assurance program. We usually discuss it in a phone call.
Then, if you already work with a project manager (PM) from our company, that PM can make sure the plan is effective. If you do not work with one of our PMs, a team in our QA dept. will be responsible for implementing the plan.
How much does creating and implementing a QA program cost?
Due to the unique nature of each Quality Assurance program, we can’t give a set cost right here.
After we have discussed your project and fully understood your requirements, we will be in a position to give you a bespoke quotation.
