Why it's Time to Break the Cycle of Outdated Quality Operations

Trying to manage production quality using traditional tools can feel like being stuck in a loop — the same issues keep recurring, and communication is ineffective. Why would you persist with such challenges when there has been an emergence of digital quality management platforms? You could have real-time visibility, network-wide collaboration, and automation of manual tasks.

Here’s why you should reassess your legacy quality system and explore the new world of end-to-end quality and compliance platforms.

4 main problems with traditional tools

1. Manual quality operations

When you rely on manual methods like checklists and spreadsheets to uphold your quality operations, your reputation is tied to individual performance.

The solution is to systematically create process-reliant operations by crafting workflows for team members. Workflows should be centralized on a platform that can scale with your entire global supply chain.

Inspectorio Sight features self-serviced, configurable workflows that support your unique requirements — all on a private collaboration network that autonomously enforces process adherence.

Manual reporting and extended lead times make identifying and addressing the root cause of issues difficult.

To fix problems at the source, you need powerful search capabilities and actionable data analysis presented in real time. Additionally, your platform should implement corrective and preventive actions (CAPAs) that address the problem.

Inspectorio alerts you to current and potential issues and helps you identify their root cause with real-time reports generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The robust Sight CAPA module manages all corrective actions, while searchable activity logs help you maintain accountability.

When quality operations aren’t digitized and online, your teams from the factory floor to the management office must perform low-value-added activities like entering data by hand, data analysis by spreadsheet, and searching through email attachments. To address the need for higher productivity, your quality management platform should execute low-value-added activities automatically.

Inspectorio empowers supply chain personnel with robust automation, offering extensive rule logic and attributes to fit every use case.

2. Disconnected data

Your supply chain likely uses different processes in different regions, but data and reporting become siloed without a centralized solution.

You need real-time, accurate data and analytics to make solid business decisions and set effective benchmarks. This requires a centralized repository for quality and compliance activities, including ESG, which can guarantee consistent data collection across your operations. A system that operates as a centralized ‘single point of truth’ must include aggregated reporting, structured data pipelines, data input features, and integration with your other data sources.

Inspectorio Sight features built-in benchmarking and ranking analytics for all network participants and their performance, configurable data sourcing, automatic data aggregation, and best-in-class integration capabilities.

The complexity and size of your supply chain make it difficult to identify areas for improvement and require a policing approach with your partners.

To adopt a preventive approach to issues that benefit both your company and your suppliers, you need a single platform for stakeholder engagement.  It should feature predefined workflows and protocols that increase ownership and accountability and an analytics interface command center to identify and treat areas for improvement.

Inspectorio is a fully collaborative network platform. All stakeholders can operate under one roof with the most robust analytics on the market, actionable KPI dashboards, and powerful searching and filtering functions.

You take a reactive approach to quality and ESG compliance.

It’s time to do more than deal with last-minute emergencies. To improve and mitigate the risk of late orders, quality issues, and unauthorized outsourcing, you need predictive analytics on factory risk and potential quality failures. When you achieve consistent execution of operations, you prepare for accurate statistical analysis — an activity best trusted to AI, as it replaces error-prone human judgment with data-driven decision-making.

Inspectorio’s dedicated data science team continuously refines machine learning algorithms to help you shift from reactive to proactive decision-making and stop problems at the source.

3. Decentralized communication

When communication is fragmented and disjointed, accurate reporting has an unacceptable risk of human error and negligence.

Sharing documents securely is critical when you’re dealing with dozens of different documents that need to be sent to remote colleagues and suppliers.

Inspectorio’s world-class UI/UX builds platform usability, user accountability, and checks and balances into all product features. Communication happens in one location, which supports efficiency, accountability, and staying on-task.

Decentralized communication results in duplicate efforts across global offices.

To solve the problem of duplicated labor, you must replace existing communication channels with a single platform to easily share defined processes across your global operations.

Inspectorio centralizes all processes, making it easy to share them with a global audience of internal users and partner organizations.

When you cannot define the regional elements of your supply chain, everyone gets an inefficient, 'one size fits all'  process.

To adapt to the changing realities of your supply chain without compromising your data integrity, you need dynamic automation and machine learning frameworks that source real-time data to make effective decisions.

Inspectorio Sight’s rule-based automation framework leverages data captured throughout the platform in real time.

4. Outdated information

Without accurate, real-time data on what’s happening on the factory floor, it is difficult to effectively calibrate supply chain processes.

To drive effective business decisions with a reliable understanding of your operations, you need trustworthy, consistent data feeding you real-time reports on all quality and sustainability activities. Achieving consistent data input from the factory floor requires intuitive user flows and support channels for platform users, as well as accurate, actionable KPIs and analytics.

With best-in-class UI/UX, Inspectorio Sight builds user accountability, platform usability, and check-and-balances into all product features. The results are the most robust supply chain analytics features on the market, as well as actionable KPI dashboards and integration with external data sources.

Vendors and factories may resist change.

The best way to bring vendors and factories on board with your digitization journey is to have a user-friendly system that’s easy to adopt. It will need e-learning resources in the appropriate languages for your supply chain partners, as well as an onboarding approach that minimizes friction with established processes.

Inspectorio’s UI/UX team has focused on ease of adoption: onboarding comes with a comprehensive e-learning suite, and the network platform reduces the number of systems you need to maintain.

Your team has no time for higher-value activities.

To prepare your team and systems for higher value-added activities, you need an automation center that can reliably replace a human performing low value-added activities.

Inspectorio’s monitorable automation can execute thousands of activities for you.

Break the cycle with new technology

Don’t stay stuck in the endless loop of outdated quality management practices.

Drill down into the underlying quality processes you’re used to working with and analyze how they work in practice. Explore modern quality management platforms and the features that enable your transition to an end-to-end digital platform and make the financial argument for change.

Take the next step with our guide on data and the future of quality management: Top 4 KPIs for Data-Driven Quality Management