We like how everywhere you look in the news world, there are different formulas for managers to follow. While some management techniques from the past still apply in the IoT world, others do not. The whole apple cart of managing people has turned on its head in the consumer-driven environment. Companies that were long-established in the market must realign their business processes or face extinction. That being said, we thought it would be good to brush up on quality management.
Quality Management Explained
When we talk about quality management, we refer to a way of managing improvement projects within an organization. The Global Association for Quality Management offers certifications for people who lead improvement projects. For example, a professional could get certified as a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, which prepares you for a part-time role in improvement projects. When you get this certification, you understand all aspects within the phases of D-M-A-I-C. You can use Six Sigma tools and apply the standards of Lean to your project. People with Green Belt certification can either belong to the organization or assist from the outside, lending their QM expertise to a project. The D-M-A-I-C model stands for Design, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control, and it lends a framework to any improvement project. It could be as simple as finding ways for workers to process the same inter-departmental document in half the time or as complex as testing the time required for a product to move through the entire production process in a factory. In quality management, an analyst studies all inputs that go into the product or process and all outputs that result from the product or process. Outputs must meet the quality standards of the organization.
Quality Management Works
A recent Forbes.com article discussed the findings of its report, “The Rising Economic Power of Quality: How Quality Ensures Growth and Enhances Profitability.” We liked this finding: “Quality has a direct impact on profit growth. Organizations embracing continuous improvement or performance excellence in a significant way are more likely to see higher levels of productivity than those who are lagging in quality efforts.” Because we manufacture plastics, we rely on quality management to drive standardized processes for everything we make. When we find products that do not meet our standards, we go back to study their respective production process and determine how to improve their quality. We want our customers to get the most reliable products on the market.
Where Customers Depend on Our Proto Plastics
We have explained how quality management works in the context of a manufacturer. We know that continuous improvement ensures that we produce better products. How does our QM methodology benefit customers? Let’s take the example of companies like yours that rely on partnerships with plastics manufacturers to source parts for your products. We offer ways for companies to reduce their costs by changing something about their partnership. We might be able to better meet your need for plastics. Here are two examples we describe on our website:
Example 1: We can help a company switch a metal part to a plastic part without sacrificing the quality or the functionality of a product. We have engineers to study whether a product would be just as structurally sound after switching to plastic.
Example 2: We help companies decide whether it’s time to switch plastics manufacturers, which could be as simple as transferring a tooling from the current factory to ours. We have engineers to ensure that your existing tooling will meet your product standards when used on our equipment. We can also make adjustments to your tooling so your customers receive an improved product.
Using plastics in your products makes sense because these materials are durable and used in many applications. Automobiles, for example, have more and more plastic parts each year. For more details on the use of quality management in our plastics processes, please contact us today.