An Amazing Guide About Product Inspection and Quality Control

Product inspection and quality control refers to a thorough check of the compliance of the parameters of the manufactured goods with the established requirements.

Such a check is needed to prevent the occurrence of marriage, as well as to avoid the production of products that do not meet existing standards.

That is why control requires constantly analyzing deviations in product characteristics, which allows timely detection of any defects and inconsistencies.

Importance of Product Quality Control

Product quality control is an integral part of the production process and refers to checking the reliability in the process of its manufacture, consumption or operation.

The essence of product quality control at the enterprise is to obtain information about the state of the object and compare the results obtained with the established requirements recorded in the drawings, standards, supply contracts, technical specifications.

Control involves checking products at the very beginning of the production process and during the period of operational maintenance.

In Case of Deviation

Ensuring that, in case of deviation from the regulated quality requirements, corrective measures come into action to produce products of good quality, proper maintenance during operation and full satisfaction of customer requirements. 

Thus, product control includes such measures at the place of its manufacture or at the place of its use, as a result of which deviations from the norm of the required level of quality can be corrected.

Even before defective or non-compliant products are released. Quality control includes:

• incoming quality control of raw materials , basic and auxiliary materials, semi-finished products, components, tools entering the warehouses of the enterprise;
• production step-by-step control over compliance with the established technological regime, and sometimes inter-operational acceptance of products;
• systematic monitoring of the condition of equipment, machines, cutting and measuring tools, instrumentation, various measuring instruments, stamps, models of test equipment and weight facilities, new and in-service devices, production and transportation conditions of products and other checks;
• control of models and prototypes;
• control of finished products (parts, small assembly units, subassemblies, assemblies, blocks, products).

What does the Definition Include?

To check the quality of the goods produced, it is necessary:

1. Control the raw materials and materials used in the work, as well as all kinds of components and tools involved.
2. Conduct step-by-step control to check the accuracy of compliance with the production process.
3. Perform inter-operational acceptance of goods.
4. Check the condition of the equipment used, as well as instrumentation and equipment that determine the conditions of production.
5. Control prototypes.
6. Check finished goods and products.
   

If we talk only about the verification of manufactured goods, then it includes three stages: preliminary control of the raw materials used, quality assessment at the stages of the production process, and verification of finished products.

Quality Promotion

The quality promotion process covers:

• development of documentation reflecting the methods and means of motivation in the field of product quality assurance;
• development of provisions on bonuses to employees of the enterprise for the quality of work (together with the department of organization of labor and wages);
• training and professional development.

A special type of quality control is testing of finished products – this is the determination or study of one or more product characteristics under the influence of a combination of physical, chemical, natural or operational factors and conditions.

Tests occur according to the relevant programs. Depending on the goals, there are the following main types of tests:

• preliminary tests are tests of prototypes to determine the possibility of acceptance tests;
• acceptance tests are tests of prototypes to determine the possibility of putting them into production;
• acceptance tests are tests of each product to determine the possibility of its delivery to the customer;
• periodic tests are tests that people perform once every 3 to 5 years to check the stability of production;
• type tests are tests of serial products after significant changes in design or technology have been made.

Product Control Measures

The following product control measures may apply at various enterprises.

In individual enterprises, product control measures may cover the entire cycle of mass production, during which raw materials and purchased elements are transformed, moving from one process to another, into the final product.

However, in enterprises specializing in the processing of parts, these measures can cover only that part of the full cycle that is associated with the processing of elements.

In other plants, product control has a limit to the control of assembly processes.

However, in all cases, product control is associated with an orderly flow of work pieces and materials.

Here, as a rule, there are following stages:

1. Receipt of an order for a part, material, or assembly.
2. Studying the requirements contained in the order and taking the steps necessary to fulfill the order, including the correct distribution of the available process and control equipment.
3. Transfer of the order to production.
4. Material control in the manufacturing process.
5. Product approval.
6. Checking the quality of products and evaluating the results.
7. Product packaging and delivery The product

Control measures applied during these seven stages can be divided into two groups:

1. Measures to establish and maintain production standards (carried out at stages 13).
2. Measures to control the material during serial production (carried out at stages 47).

Product Quality Control Management

The organization of product quality control at the enterprise requires the creation of a special system, which is a set of interrelated elements for checking and all the means and methods used to assess the quality characteristics of manufactured products, as well as means for preventing defects at different stages of the production process.

The overall system includes elements responsible for recognizing defects and visually determining the quality of products, as well as for checking not only qualitative, but also quantitative indicators of production, for example, product counters on a conveyor.

The system makes it possible to compare the achieved results of the production process with the planned ones, to quickly respond to any failures at all stages before they negatively affect the characteristics of the products.

Application of Quality Control Systems in Practice

Smart quality control in production today is of interest to companies from various fields and industries.

Such technologies are being implemented both as part of the creation of intelligent, digitized enterprises, and independently in order to reduce the amount of marriage.

Digitalization of Siemens – A Great Example

One of the leading companies in the field of digitalization is Siemens, which not only manufactures, but also actively uses smart equipment.

The company has launched and operates a smart electronics factory in Amberg, where industrial controllers are produced: more than 1,000 products with a volume of approximately 12 million units per year.

Thanks to the use of intelligent technologies, including control systems, the quality of the products manufactured by the plant is 99.999%.

That is, about 1 unit of defective products leaves the production line per 100,000 quality products.

To achieve a positive effect from the use of quality control management, it is not at all necessary to completely rebuild, digitalize production.

Cameras for monitoring production processes alone can achieve excellent results. For example, ABWood (a major furniture supplier for IKEA) used Axis brand IP cameras to solve several problems at once:

• reduction of production errors by at least 25%;
• packing and packing control.
  

To do this, Axis equipment was used along with specialized software that allows you to track the movement of products through the plant, control the quality of packaging, keep inventory records, check barcodes and RFID tags, collect resource data and store records.

The new system exceeded all expectations of the company: it allowed to reduce the number of production problems by 44%, thanks to which it fully paid for itself in just 7 months.

At the same time, the company managed to establish control over the entire path traversed by the goods: if the customer had complaints, it became possible to track at what stage the problem arose and determine the best ways to prevent such troubles in the future .

Example of a Modern Technological Solution

An excellent example of a modern technological solution for product quality control is also the Ligercorp analytics system.

This is a proprietary development of the Ligercorp company.

We have created a functional real-time video monitoring system that allows you to recognize objects in an industrial enterprise with an accuracy of up to 98%.

Ligercorp allows you to:

• check the safety and characteristics of products 24/7;
• analyze objects in real time;
• instantly notify about any problems;
• automatically keep statistics on all violations.

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