Do you buy and import home & decoration products from China, Vietnam, India, and/or Pakistan? Do you feel you need a solid grip on your product-related information, including tests and inspections?
It is not unusual for companies in your industry.
Let’s look at important considerations when it comes to picking a quality management software solution to enhance home and decoration products.
1. Product information is in a catalogue
Chances are, your company’s catalogue already includes the product basic specifications and photos. So there needs to be a way to pull that information into the software.
This information needs to be shown to inspectors who check the quality of products in the factory. Ideally, the product information is organized in different fields, and these specifications can then be shown as distinct points to verify.
2. Many SKUs
Very often for home and decoration products, one purchase order consists of up to 20 or more products. That’s usually the nature of decoration items. One manufacturer of willow baskets, for example, will make 15 types of baskets and ship them to you.
In this situation, it is essential for your inspectors to use a mobile application that generates a report automatically. This way, they can check more SKUs in a day in the factory, instead of being hampered by needing to produce reports when they could be inspecting products.
Using quality management software like SynControl, their new inspection process would look something like this:
3. The need for technical files
You need to keep an archive of all the information related to each (product, supplier) couple. If you are in the UE, you have to be able to present it 10 years after you put products on the market!
How to keep all the certificates, product test reports, and QC inspection reports? That’s where a quality management software can be really useful. Organizing that information in technical folders, and requesting the suppliers to upload documents, is probably what you need.
4. Difficulties tracking what is made where
Are you sure you know of all the factories involved in your production? You probably work with trading companies that place production in 5 different workshops in their area. And, in a few instances, the production might be made in 25 different homes in a given village!
Do you want to know about that? Maybe not.
So you should keep track of the quality results at the supplier level, not at the factory level. But you do need statistics about each supplier’s performance!
What about your company? How do you manage quality-related information? How is it supporting the work of your quality assurance department? Do you use quality inspection software now, or is it something on the cards for you in 2018 and beyond?
Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment below, and we’ll be pleased to respond.
