Quality Management Applications in MES Systems

What are the benefits of using a quality management system?

Since we will talk about Quality management processes under MES systems today, it would be more accurate to mention the importance of Quality management only in the production sector.

First of all, what is Quality? It is necessary to look at the answer to this, in fact, although there is no clear definition of quality, with the generally accepted definition of Quality: It means that the specified function and all measurable properties of a product or service are and will always be the same.

Definition of quality according to the Japan industrial standards committee: Quality is Customer Satisfaction.

Today, there is a fierce competition in every sector without exception. All businesses compete to stand out in this competition by offering their customers the best product at the best price. The magic key to offering the best product at the best price is the use of quality management systems. Companies that fully implement quality processes reduce their costs, increase customer loyalty by offering quality products to the market and have the opportunity to find new markets. A brand that offers quality and affordable products has always been the 1st choice of consumers.

In addition, today, the operation of quality processes has become a necessity in many sectors, not an initiative of the enterprise. For example, if you are producing automotive spare parts, you must have certain quality certificates in order for automobile manufacturing companies to buy parts from you, so you must be implementing quality processes.

Some of the benefits of Quality Management Systems are as follows:

Standardization is ensured in production processes and final products by defining the quality control of all processes and products.
Resource utilization is at an optimum level and the number of rejects and scrap is reduced.
Delivery times are shortened and there are no delays in shipments.
Customer satisfaction is at the highest level, the possibility of a problem in a product shipped to the customer is eliminated.
Reduces costs.

What are quality control methods?

What comes to mind when we say Quality Control Methods;

Getting it right from the start
Getting the highest efficiency from the available machinery and labor force
Elimination of production losses
Reducing the scrap-to-fire waste ratio.

Giving products to the buyer within the tolerances they want means giving the company a good reputation.

The concept of Quality Control is based on the input, process and final control activities handled within a process structure.

Methods applied to achieve an objective or standard:

Observation
Control
Detecting the error, finding the cause of its origin
It is a system of how it should be corrected.

Quality Control steps, the following steps are applied in the process steps.

First Approval: We can start by saying that quality is a precaution. After the first approval; starting production means stopping losses from the beginning.

Frequency Approval: To reduce production losses. As the mass production time increases, it becomes difficult to increase the degree of reliability. Controls at certain intervals reduce production losses.

Final Check

Design perfection
Flawlessness in use
Price perfection
Excellence in delivery time
Perfection during the sales period

And this situation is your company;

Increases your competitiveness.
Reduces returns.
Customers' requests and expectations are fully met.

When managing the quality control process, it is vital to manage quality documents and processes to improve production and service quality. In enterprises, it has become almost impossible to follow the versions of thousands of quality documents in paper form, to get them approved and to deliver them to the right people on time.

With the MES application, Quality personnel can quickly receive information about which station is waiting for approval via text messages sent to them. After going to the relevant area, they can quickly perform approval procedures by providing data entry of quality measurements with the tablet application. It is also possible to see product images to prevent errors.

"Continuous Improvement Activities" will be ongoing both in internal processes and after shipment. The performance and effectiveness of the corrective and preventive actions, communication and suggestion systems created to ensure continuous improvement are measured, and the system is continuously improved in line with the data obtained.

Corrective actions must be implemented."

Customer complaints, nonconforming products, nonconformities identified in internal quality audits and recommendations are the basic parameters for initiating corrective actions.

MES Systems ensure that the corrective and preventive actions process and the customer complaints process are integrated with each other on the system.

If deemed necessary at the end of the customer complaint process, it automatically initiates the DÖF process.

Corrective actions are also initiated according to process findings, suggestions, management review outputs, internal waste, and employee expectations.

How does MES System affect quality processes?

MES systems enable us to make our work easier and do it right in the follow-up of quality processes. In planned work orders, the right equipment, the right raw material / semi-finished product, the right personnel matching is managed with MES. This will directly affect your quality processes.

Since companies with MES are obliged to perform quality control in long production processes and these quality values can be compared with the expected default values in real-time, any problem that is invisible to the eye but will constitute a quality problem is diagnosed earlier. Products / intermediate products with this problem are prevented from being produced for long periods of time.

How does MES System affect quality processes?

When a new mold is connected to the workstations, when a mold is newly maintained, or when any equipment adjustment/setup adjustment/calibration adjustment independent of the mold is made, the production is required to go through a certain test phase and quality control on the samples. This follow-up can be tracked digitally, recorded and these test and control times can be minimized by the MES solution.

For example, when a mold malfunctions in a press machine, the maintainer comes and performs repairs, and when this maintenance is completed, an SMS/email alert is sent to the quality personnel on the MES side. In this way, instead of using any paper or making a phone call, quality personnel with this information go to the field. In this way, they carry out their controls for the first productions in the determined number to be made with the maintained or new mold by saving time.

We can see another application as in "Frequency Quality Control". Let's consider the amount of work order sent as 10000 phone cases. However, according to their previous experience, this company foresees that the quality inspector will perform the controls every 1000 units. Because after every 1000 units of production, he realizes that there may be fraying/burning/cracking on the cases. This enables the company to take action in advance if there are any problems or if it is thought that there may be any problems by performing the control in every 1000 units as a frequency. The place where MES comes into play is again to prevent time losses, because these losses actually return to the company as financial losses. When the number of 950, 1950, 2950 etc. is reached via SMS/email sent automatically, if the relevant personnel from the quality department is reached, the personnel can perform the necessary control without any loss of time. Thanks to this system, we can track this data very easily and autonomously through MES instead of taking pages of notes/reminders about which product will be tested on which machine in quality control.

What impact can emerging technologies have on quality processes?

Highly sensitive measuring devices are used for quality measurements. In some sectors, for example in companies that produce products for the pharmaceutical or medical sector, products with nanometer-sized lengths and milligram-sized weights need to be measured precisely. For this reason, quality applications are systems that closely follow technology. Thanks to the development of computer technologies, quality measurement processes have started to be automated in many sectors.

Image processing technologies in particular are leading the way in this field, thanks to their affordable prices. Since it would be very difficult to check the conductive paths and 10s of micro electronic elements on a circuit board with the human eye, there is a computer on the production line that takes a picture of the circuit board. It checks the manufactured product according to the reference picture loaded into its memory, and if it finds any defects or errors, it rejects the board from the production line.

Of course, this process is recorded in the quality control system and recorded in the daily quality sheets. This whole process is independent of human beings and runs on high technology.

If we move on to the next image, in the picture on the left, a representative metal fan controls hairline cracks that the human eye cannot distinguish by sending a laser beam from the top.

In the picture on the right, the barcode control is done by computers in order to prevent the product from leaving the factory with the wrong barcode.

The biggest advantage that high technology brings to quality applications is the speed factor, a measurement or control that a human can do in 5-10 minutes, the technological methods we have just mentioned can do it in less than 1 second, and the error rates are almost zero.

Thanks to this advantage, quality control and measurements can now be made in more samples, perhaps in all products produced. The quality control of all products also provides the brand with a 100% quality product image.