How Greater Visibility into Laboratory Test Results Improves Production Quality

Bottom line

Imagine one holistic dashboard that allowed you to easily review all your quality data—including laboratory test results, production data, performance data, defect information, and more.

Maintaining multiple storage systems for quality data can result in problems, from delays in decision-making to impaired data visualization. Inspection data remains imperative to the successful lifecycle of a Purchase Order (PO), yet companies continue to suffer from lack of data visibility as a result of disconnected systems.

End customers demand and deserve high-quality products. Tolerance for variance in quality is low, and the risk for companies delivering substandard products is high, putting the company’s reputation at stake. But with so many different aspects to validate—manual inspections, laboratory testing, warehouse data, defect results, color tests, safety compliance, and more—without one central dashboard on which to store data, companies lack visibility and in turn lose significant time trying to make up for it.

Laboratory testing is essential to maintaining rigorous quality and safety standards. These tests allow companies to produce high-quality products and certify that goods conform to safety regulations and meet the client’s requirements for specifications and quality levels. The results ensure that the production process goes smoothly and that the manufactured products meet the set requirements.

The testing process typically begins with a brand or retailer examining the PO information to determine which third-party laboratory will be best suited for performing the tests. Then the third-party laboratory coordinates with the supplier to receive the sample product, visit the facility, and perform the required tests. All protocols are written by the third-party laboratory and approved by the brand or retailer.

By using the laboratory test results collected between the Pre-Production Meeting and During Production, testing processes make the production lifecycle more efficient and raise the quality of the finished product, building another level of confidence in product quality through various checks in a live production environment.

To deliver a quality product, companies need to ensure a quality control process is being upheld. The simplest and most efficient way to validate that standards are being met is by compiling every piece of data for a PO in one place. Currently, however, laboratory test results are separated from other critical types of data, forcing stakeholders to view test and inspection results separately. They are unable to view the complete data set and gain the full picture of a PO’s information, which wastes valuable decision-making and implementation time.

In today’s tech-based modern production environment, the depth of measured data has become incredibly dense. With the implementation of new goals, standards, processes, and technologies, removing pain points and blind spots in production quality is of the utmost importance. To thrive, companies must enable themselves to implement new solutions. The struggle, then, is with finding the best solution.

The Inspectorio Solution

What if those laboratory results could be integrated with the rest of a PO’s information?

By having the results integrated with the rest of their data, clients can make more efficient decisions. The earlier that issues are caught, the easier and cheaper it is to find a solution, which leads to fewer unwanted rejects and customer renegotiations and less wasted labor and materials, improving the efficiency of the entire supply chain.

Inspectorio allows the client’s third-party inspection company, Product Lifestyle Management (PLM) or Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) to integrate with the Inspectorio platform. Users and their key stakeholders are able to view the data on a single dashboard to quickly determine the status and the laboratory test results and share those results with customers and suppliers. Users can also attach supplemental materials associated with the test results, such as images, PDFs, spreadsheets, or zipped files.

Laboratory test results are displayed on Inspectorio’s Purchase Order Management page under a visual icon, allowing users to quickly locate and view the tests.

Laboratory testing is a proactive and necessary type of testing used by manufacturers to qualify a new part or assembly in accordance with predetermined quality standards. By creating a platform that unites the laboratory data with all other PO information, Inspectorio enables users with visibility and transparency through their fully integrated quality and sustainability network platform.

By integrating laboratory tests into the full Inspectorio platform, users can set their inspectors, warehouses, retailers, and end customers up for success. With each data point at their fingertips every step of the way, users can make the right decisions and deliver the best product.

Inspectorio SIGHT is an end-to-end quality control platform that digitizes and optimizes pre-production, inline, final, warehouse, and remote inspections across the global production chain. SIGHT leverages advanced data analytics and machine learning to assess risk and recommend predictive actions to drive continuous improvements. With a fully configurable platform, you can standardize and automate quality operations for increased visibility and collaboration across your supply chain. Shift your quality operations from reactive to preventive.