Articles

How ERP Improves Product Quality

By unifying and streamlining workflows across the entire business, ERP solutions improves quality control standards and overall product quality.

The Benefits of an ERP Solution for Product Quality Control

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software can help manufacturers improve product quality by automating tasks, streamlining workflows, and providing real-time data insights. This can lead to fewer defects, improved efficiency, and reduced costs.

For many manufacturers, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are the backbone of their operations. An ERP solution is advanced business management technology that automates workflows, integrates diverse departments, and strengthens collaboration. These features uniquely qualify ERP technology to help manufacturers improve and better manage their product quality assurance and control programs.

Quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) are essential aspects of manufacturing, whether it is a production or service. QA is the plan manufacturers have in place to ensure quality requirements are met, while QC is the act of fulfilling said quality requirements.

To manufacture a quality product, you must empower your teams to identify real and potential defects and issues, while helping them communicate and address these concerns. This can be done through a variety of methods, such as quality planning, manufacturing processes, and quality improvement.

By implementing a quality management system (QMS), you can ensure that your products and services meet specific customer expectations, even in mass production. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, as well as a reduction in costs associated with rework and defects.

A modern, comprehensive ERP solution can make all this possible, providing:

· Streamlined communication channels between departments.

· More accurate data and improved data hygiene.

· Complete visibility of inventory and product levels.

· Greater opportunities for product testing and management.

Using Accurate Data to Build a Stronger Product

Accurate data is essential for building a stronger product. ERP (Enterprise Resource Software) software can help manufacturers collect and analyze data from all aspects of the manufacturing process, including production, quality control, and customer feedback. This data can be used to identify potential problems early on, improve product design, and optimize manufacturing processes.

Strong, quality-driven products begin and end with clean, accurate data—data that supports strategic decision-making and effective quality control.

A cloud-based ERP solution automatically collects data from every department and every manufacturing process. That data is then stored, synchronized, and made available for real-time analysis. Team members can access accurate data from anywhere, at any time, giving them complete visibility into every stage of the manufacturing pipeline. This means they have the information they need to make better decisions and build stronger products.

Here are some specific ways that ERP can help manufacturers use accurate data to build a stronger product:

Identifying potential problems early on: ERP software can help manufacturers identify potential problems early on by tracking data such as defect rates, production yields, and customer complaints. This data can be used to take corrective action before the problems cause defects or other quality issues.
Improving product design: ERP software can help manufacturers improve product design by tracking data such as customer feedback, product testing results, and competitor analysis. This data can be used to identify areas where the product can be improved to better meet customer needs and requirements.
Optimizing manufacturing processes: ERP software can help manufacturers optimize manufacturing processes by tracking data such as production schedules, material usage, and machine downtime. This data can be used to identify areas where the manufacturing process can be improved to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

“[With Acumatica], everything is integrated now. Before, only a handful of people could identify if something was missing or if there was a discrepancy, and, even then, we often missed it. We no longer miss it. We now have accurate inventory that we can rely on.” – Devin Samayamanthri, Chief of Staff, Design Studio

"We’ve seen the power of the Acumatica platform and how easy it is to work with, and how easy and accurate the integrations are. Finance, purchasing, operations can do so much with the GI (Generic Inquiry) tool, importing and exporting data."

Sendy Stern, Chief Technology Officer

Fabuwood

An ERP Solution and the Product Quality Control Cycle

Using an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution to manage and guide the product quality control cycle produces several key benefits.

1. Seamless Communication Channels Between Departments

Product quality control is a complex process, but an ERP solution can help teams collaborate effectively by making data easily accessible and available in real time. This allows everyone involved in the product development, design, and refinement process to work together with the same information, leading to the creation of high-quality products.

2. Improved Data Hygiene and Actionable Insights

Like communication, data hygiene (e.g., processes that ensure a business’s data is free of outdated, incomplete, and inaccurate information) is crucial to quality control. Clean data is the foundation of sound manufacturing decisions, but manual data hygiene processes are prone to human error. By automating workflows, an ERP solution produces, stores, analyzes, and presents cleaner, more valuable, and more actionable data.

3. Streamlined Product Testing Management

Products need to be tested before they’re released to the public. If you don’t test your products, flaws and design issues could go unnoticed by you, but they won’t go unnoticed by your customers. An ERP solution can help you define quality testing guidelines, create quality orders, track test results, reduce errors, and improve compliance. And if quality concerns do come up, the ERP software can help you track down the issue and resolve it.

4. Automated Quality Control Tasks

An ERP solution is designed to automate manual tasks. Examples of manufacturing product quality tasks include quality control inspections, auditing processes (e.g., monitoring machine performance), and data collection. By automating these and other vital quality control tasks, you can streamline workflows, avoid bottlenecks, and detect potential defects before they occur. You will also save time, reduce human error, increase productivity, and decrease costs while efficiently and repeatedly producing high quality products that keep your customers returning for more.

5. Easily Integrate with Other Systems

No single business management system can meet the needs of every business. That’s why interoperability is essential.

Interoperability is the ability of different systems to work together. An ERP solution with open APIs (application programming interfaces) enables interoperability. This allows businesses to seamlessly integrate third-party applications, which can help to improve quality control and operational performance.

Manufacturing Management in Action

“Acumatica is a great platform with open APIs, a dependable SaaS platform, and it has been very beneficial for our apparel manufacturing business. I highly recommend Acumatica to anyone who wants a similar solution in the manufacturing sector. Acumatica has already helped us save time on reports by using dashboards, and we anticipate additional benefits with improved visibility throughout the company.” – Harini Perera, Head of IT & Business Analysis, Design Studio

“We were running blind before. Now, we can see volume, location, type of product, and managers can prepare and put new orders into the production schedule.

If a mistake is made by us, no matter what it is, there’s often a cost involved. Using cases in Acumatica, we can identify them and pick them up as soon as possible. We are very customer-centric; without customers we don’t exist, and we try to give the best service possible.” – Tim Patton, ICT Director, SAM

“With Acumatica, we have a much tighter connection between the sales process flowing to manufacturing, and our inventory accuracy improved substantially. The fact that we can build out detailed BOMs and have good information about product costing is a big benefit and something that we really struggled with before.” – Andy Gale, CFO and COO, LiveView Technologies, Inc.

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