Quality is an increasingly hot issue in manufacturing.

With production processes forever being reengineered to extract cost, whether in time or materials, there are fewer margins for error. There are also fewer people on the shop floor managing the process so it is also more important than ever to make quality-related data available to them quickly.

But quality is not merely a matter of rejecting sub-standard output. These days, more and more customers expect to see information on their suppliers’ quality processes. Whereas audits alone might once have been enough, now they want detailed data on quality performance – sometimes for each production run.

In most manufacturing environments, getting all the data on quality together in one place where it can be managed, examined and reported on is major stumbling block, especially where data is collected from a variety of sources, at different intervals and by different groups of people.

It is not uncommon for relevant data to be distributed between a number of systems with some residing in, say, a CMM (co-ordinate measuring machine) and other data collected from gauges in the lab and on-line checks recorded on paper.

Now instead of having to manage several systems, the whole of the quality plan can be managed in one centralised system. Shopfloor-Online MES software enables you to implement a quality system that defines all of the quality checks, including sample sizes and frequencies, for all of the product and process specifications.

It brings benefits in a number of areas. Shopfloor-Online MES knows the quality plan and makes it makes it clear to everyone who collects data what needs to be done and when, so there are no excuses for missing checks.

Directly connecting the system to gauges and measuring equipment saves time for hard-pressed operators responsible for carrying out many different checks at different frequencies. It also reduces the possibility of errors.

You can tighten control. For instance, you can be sure that the latest revisions to the control plan and specifications are being followed.

All the data is collected in one central database, which means it can be handled in a consistent way and presented in a graphic format that’s visible to everyone. Alarms are generated to alert operators to problems that can no longer go unnoticed.

Shopfloor-Online MES analyses the data automatically and provides a picture of the quality position on a real-time basis. It allows operators and management to work on an exception-driven basis – automatically alerting people to problems when they arise. This saves time, improves reliability and makes everyone more effective.

It can produce summary reports for management on a shift, daily, weekly or monthly basis. In the event of problems it allows you to drill in to all the production process-related data such as tool changes, product changes, maintenance activities and material changes to answer the question: “What happened?”

Shopfloor-Online MES can provide customer certificates automatically, saving hours for those who currently have to do it. And, of course, it can generate the capability reports typically required at a group level.

In the longer term the data allows you to identify where effort should be focused to improve the process capability. You can then measure the improvements in capability to track the effectiveness of improvement work.

And where compiling and presenting information for a customer compliance audit was once time consuming and possibly had gaps, Shopfloor-Online MES provides watertight proof that the quality system is being executed as stipulated. It is now often cited as a key success point of an audit.

Shopfloor-Online MES is a modular suite of software that can be added to as each application proves itself and generates savings. It can be implemented in a single plant or deployed across groups of factories in any number of countries and languages. It is supported by your existing IT infrastructure with consequent savings in terms of training, support and maintenance as you replace your legacy systems.