Markets have become ever more competitive due to being saturated with businesses. Not only is it important to market your business to a large audience, but you must also maintain these customers. So what is quality control?
Customers expect the highest of standards and sometimes all it takes is some inconsistency in the products that may cause the business to go under.
This is why it’s essential for businesses to have a clear understanding of what is quality control and its implications on your business. Now, lets define quality control and the preceding benefits your business can get by utilizing it.
What Is the Quality Control?
To define quality control, it is important to understand the significance of having a consistent product. By having consistent products, customers can know what to expect from your brand.
This maintains customer loyalty and boosts word-of-mouth advertising which ultimately boosts sales. Quality control is the process by which a business ensures that its product is up to standards.
By checking the finished product before it is shipped, your business is able to maintain a standard of quality that you set for yourself. This can be done in several ways.
The simplest being inspection of all products released. As the business grows, it becomes much more efficient to draw samples from the production line relying on statistical analysis.
What Is Quality Control in Management?
Managers use quality control more than anyone in their day to day lives. In fact, managing a team effectively is essentially impossible without managing the quality of their work in some way or another.
This is because managers are ultimately responsible for their team’s output. This is true if you’re managing a couple of software developers, or a whole factory full of workers. The same principles apply in either case.
Here’s what quality control means for managers.
Efficiency
By constantly checking the products for inconsistencies in quality, any problems happening in your production line may be identified quickly in order to minimize wastes.
By reducing wastes, your production costs are reduced as you are able to save the raw materials that would otherwise be wasted as well as the labor put into a product that will never be sold.
High efficiency is the goal of any growing company.
At a large enough scale, a 1% increase in efficiency might mean thousands of dollars in increased sales. Additionally, higher efficiency allows you to provide competitive prices that give you the edge over less efficient businesses.
Increased Quality Standards and Project Awareness
Your decision to monitor quality will be known throughout your company. Your employees will know that you value quality and thus will work their hardest to provide the highest quality of goods in order to impress you.
By inspecting the quality of products, you create a motivation for workers to be more thorough with their work.
For labor intensive products, it is often found that the better your quality control process is, the less likely there are to be defects in the products since workers will be extra thorough to ensure that their products are not rejected.
Consistency
By enforcing quality control, your products will have less variability. By having consistent products, customers are a lot more likely to keep using your brand over the competition. A consistent product builds customer loyalty, making them less likely to try out a new brand.
Eliminating competition before it is even established. Furthermore, consistency of your product builds your brand’s image.
By getting people accustomed to a certain standard of quality from your brand, they will feel a lot safer recommending your product to people they know.
This is otherwise known as word-of-mouth advertising and is regarded as one of the most effective methods of advertising as people trust the opinion of people they know.
Quality Control Tools
Of course, quality control is much easier nowadays, as there are a raft of dedicated tools available. Some of these are dedicated project management software. Others are simple techniques with pens and paper.
Let’s take a look at some of the best quality control tools you can use.
Fishbone Diagrams
When diagnosing problems in your production line that may be causing the fluctuations in quality, a fishbone diagram may prove useful. This simple diagram will help you identify the several causes for a problem clearly.
This helps with brainstorming and troubleshooting. By plotting down all the possible causes that have led to your problem, it becomes much easier to convey the current problem to several people as well as discuss possible solutions that address these problems.
Control Charts
A statistical representation of the changes in production over time. This allows you to create an average baseline of quality that you can then compare against to determine the fluctuations in quality.
By comparing your current data to a pre-established trend you can identify if your product fluctuations are predictable or random. This is a valuable tool for monitoring product quality significant to what is quality control of your production line.
Check Sheets
This form allows you to collect data “on-site” regarding your products. It allows you to track various statistics regarding your sales like the number of late deliveries, incorrect orders or damaged goods.
This allows you to identify the frequency of issues you might be facing in order to identify trends that need to be addressed. Having check sheets will save you a lot of “hindsight” tracking which mostly wastes your time as it could be easily done on the spot if implemented correctly.
What is Quality Control? Summary
This article aims to answer the question of what is quality control. Quality control is an essential part of any successful business for many reasons.
To begin with, it allows for maximum efficiency by minimizing wastes which ultimately reduces production costs and allows for competitive prices.
Furthermore, having a quality control system is a major motivator for your employees as it shows that their efforts are tracked and appreciated which ultimately reduces errors. Additionally, having a consistent product quality builds brand loyalty with customers which makes it more likely for them to stick to your business.
Customer loyalty does not only retain customers but it also promotes your business growth through word of mouth advertising as customers will be confident when suggesting your product to others.
Quality control might initially seem like a tedious process. However, the massive benefits it produces makes it very worthwhile. By applying these simple tactics, you will be on the first steps to maximizing efficiency which ultimately allows you to remain competitive in today’s vicious markets.
For further productivity, make sure you check out our product management guide to ensure maximal productivity.
