Industry Directions advisory: How to avert a crisis using quality management
By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 4/10/2008 8:52:00 PM
Industry Directions offers a new paper, The Quality Imperative: Averting a Crisis for Suppliers in Developing Countries, outlining the high risk of a crisis in customer confidence facing suppliers in emerging economies, and a way to prevent this by delivering quality products with proof of process compliance.
With stories of product and material recalls from China and other low-labor cost countries, buyers may begin to rethink their global sourcing choices if these suppliers do not act quickly to improve not only their quality, but the transparency of their operations.
When labor costs are low, some companies assume they can just throw people at this problem. As companies in emerging economies grow rapidly, their costs, complexity, competition, and rate of change also rise. Adding even skilled employees cannot fix the quality threat, and may even exacerbate it. Employees with no standard guidance may jeopardize the supplier’s ability to comply with government safety and environmental regulations such as Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directives.
Clearly, suppliers need to build in quality management and manufacturing execution systems (MES)—particularly those with quality functionality integrated—that can support that effort. The paper also lists six major characteristics that companies should look for in selecting MES.
This paper is available for free download. The work was underwritten by Camstar Systems, an MES provider for medical device makers, semiconductor, electronics, and solar cell companies.
