Products: how to establish a procedure for quality control

There's nothing better than knowing that your customers are happy with a product they have just bought from your company. There's nothing more fulfilling than customers expressing their gratitude to the company that sold that product or service to them; a product or service that helped them solve a problem and made their life easier. The happy ending of a commercial process is knowing that closing sales is always satisfactory for all the areas of a company.

Now, you don't have to rest on your laurels and assume that your products offer the quality guarantee our customers expect, since problems arise when we're not paying attention; it's better to avoid having unsatisfied customers by establishing a procedure to control the quality of your products. 

This is why every company that delivers a product or service must be sure it meets the quality standards established by the company. Otherwise, you will get a complaint about a faulty product that didn't go through the procedure to control its quality.

Let's talk about quality control…

Quality control is a procedure that a product or service goes through to determine if it meets the standards previously set by the company. These standards are based on attributes and variables of the product or service. 

Attributes are qualities that products and services have. For instance, for a product, its attributes could be a color, a slot made on the product, a legend or seal, etc. 

Variables quantify the qualities that products and services have. In the previous example, the variables of a product could be the Pantone of color, the size of the slot made in the product, the content of the legend, the size of the seal, etc. 

As regards this, all products or services have a group of standards that determine their quality. 

Among the advantages you have for establishing a procedure to control the quality of your products, we can find the following: 

• It develops trust in the product. 
• It optimizes the company's image since its products achieve a quality standard. 
• It saves money since it reduces refunds of your products. 
• It leads to specialization and continuous improvement. 

Now, you understand the importance of establishing a procedure to control the quality of your products; now, let's talk about the procedure per se. 

Quality control procedure for your products 

Next, we'll explain the steps you need to take to carry out the quality control of your products dynamically. 

1. Previous step: correct the production process 

Monitoring the production process of products will allow you to have better control over what's used as raw material and in the finished product that is distributed in the market. 

2. Define the standard

Here, you define what attributes and variables you're going to measure; they will determine if the manufacturing of products is carried out according to the quality standards the company has established. You should analyze the differences between your desired standard and the real standard. 

3. Define batch and sample

From your daily production, you should define what batch you're going to examine. Within the batch, you also have to choose which sample you're going to choose, such as a number of representative units that allow you to contrast the results for all that production.

4. Gather the sample units

Gather all the units you're going to examine and analyze whether they meet the standards according to the attributes and variables you defined previously. This gathering can be carried out during the production stage, or at the end. 

5. Carry out the quality control

Here, you have to analyze the unit you gathered following the quality standards of attributes and variables and, according to the results, mark it as accepted or rejected. 

If the unit you analyzed has flaws, you can reprocess it or reject it. In case you can correct its problems, you can turn it into a unit with the required quality. In case you can't correct it, you have to reject it because it doesn't meet the established quality standards. 

Depending on the number of rejected units, sometimes, you can discard the complete batch since there's a high possibility that there are more faulty units in it. 

6. Analyze deviations or discarded units

Why did you have to discard units? What was the cause? Find out if there's a common cause for the deterioration of the quality and, therefore, not fulfilling the established standard. 

The discarded units represent a financial loss for the company; therefore, you should be very strict in the quality control of all your batches so that you don't regret any more losses. 

7. Make decisions 

Taking into account the previous steps and, mainly, the flaws that you could have noticed in the procedure of quality control of your products, determine if you can modify an instance of the production process: adjustments in teams, staff training, modification of the raw material you use, etc. 

Making decisions as regards the procedure of quality control will help you not only to complete the process but also will provide you with tools to make changes that allow you to improve the quality of your products. 

In conclusion, to establish a procedure to control the quality of your products you should begin analyzing the production process itself; then, when you already know what materials have been used in the final product, define the quality standard, the batch and sample, carry out the corresponding quality controls with that sample to detect possible deviations that make you discard units and, having those results, make decisions about what to improve.