How can you use product knowledge to improve quality control?

Whenever possible, always go and see where and how your product is made. Spend some time on the floor and ask questions. Not only does this give you perspective on how it is made, it will also change your perspective on how much goes into making the product. If possible, go and see your product where it is being sold. If you can physically test and use your product, you should. If you can't, go and watch it being used and ask the customer questions about what they like and don't like. Understand both the product/customer requirements, as well as the laws and regulations that affect your product. Learn more than Agency "X" requires this. Understand how it affects your product and most likely the manufacturing and approval process.

To truly understand your products, find out “why” the material used in each components was selected. Dig into the specific material types (examples: 304SS vs 430SS or HDPE vs PP) and how they perform under use or abuse conditions. Also find out how the components interact with each other using the appropriate performance and life cycle testing. This should give you a good indication of the overall quality of the product and if you need to revise anything before going into mass production.

Part of knowing the product is evaluating the risks and potential effects of these risks on the product. This helps in taking risk based decisions and setting acceptance limits that maintain the product quality and reduces the potential non-conformity.

When it comes to manufacturing a wide range of products, I've found in my experience that it is fruitful to understand not only your product itself, but also its intimate formulation. Understanding the role of each ingredient of a product and how the materials interact within the item as a whole is one of the keys for planning ahead of any potential problems in the quality control testing of your item. With enough planning in this way, you can develop product specific SOPs to solve any of the material's expected problems, conduct multi-product analyses to solve any common issues amongst multiple different items, and generate many more kinds of directives to get ahead and optimize your quality control protocols.

Achieving optimal product quality is about understanding key process inputs. Identify the variables which impact the characteristic you are trying to improve and determine through trial/testing which variable(s) has the greatest impact. Then take action to keep this variable within the necessary ranges consistently (automated controls over human controls whenever possible) when in production. PDCA and make improvements/corrections with new information.

Suppliers are business partners. Building trust and strong relationships is a mutual goal for both suppliers and businesses owners. Nevertheless, every supplier shall be evaluated based on their responsiveness, quality and quantity. The selection and qualification of suppliers is highly important; any business should look for suppliers that share same values and similar goals especially goals related to quality.

From my work experience, utilizing product knowledge is essential for enhancing quality control. It allows for a deep understanding of product specifications and requirements, which can be used to establish precise quality control standards. By leveraging this knowledge, you can design effective inspection processes, identify potential defects or deviations, and implement proactive measures to maintain product quality. Moreover, a comprehensive understanding of the product helps in training quality control personnel, enabling them to spot issues more effectively and ensure that products meet or exceed customer expectations.

Suppliers are not your friends. But you can manage the relationship as friends. The best suppliers are the ones I treat as friends and have a personal relationship with. Once established they will always go above and beyond to get you what is needed when the time comes. Making one phone call to a known and friendly entity at the supplier is much easier then an email chain of 5 people you know work at the supplier. Treat your suppliers like people and they will deliver. Treat them like a corporate entity and watch the relationship erode.

Suppliers are people. People are the ones who are responding to quality requirements of your products. The important role in understanding the level of the quality at the suppliers is the mentality of the people in charge. In my experience it is important to know what mentality you are dealing with to be able to manage and lead the relationship in a constructive, improving, detail oriented and timely manner. Understand their understanding and effort willingness to be able to adjust and set a good practice of a communication process with a certain supplier.

Seeing is believing.. see your product at end users , supplier , seller , intermediaries, your own workshop, competitors product etc . Listing improvement opportunities at each value / supply chain and implement changes to make product that add value to all stakeholders. Remember Quality is delighting user. Many a times small changes add significant value to the product.

We hear people say "The customer is always right", but what if they really don't know the precise requirements or the tolerance is too large? As the Cheshire Cat said in Alice in Wonderland: "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." Sometimes, serving your next internal client will mark a better path to achieving your goal and will also build trust, better communication with your customers.

Understand the consequences of failure of each step of your process; this allows you to understand the critical steps / critical product aspects. THEN, and only then, design a testing programme around these criticalities to ensure you are matching your controls to the consequences of failure. There is no value in doing stringent tests to measure things nobody cares about; you are just fooling yourself by pretending that gives you control.