Even a small flaw in your manufacturing process can lead to an expensive failure of the final product. To handle this, manufacturers need to prioritize quality control and strong inspection practices, but this is difficult if you don’t have the right tools to manage it all.
Inspections are prone to issues. Whether it’s quality control, equipment maintenance, work environment safety, or industrial waste management, manufacturing leaders have a lot of data to track — and that translates to a lot of opportunities to make mistakes.
Increasingly, they are turning to manufacturing inspection software. Whether you have an internal quality team or you’re an outsourced quality team working for a manufacturer, the right software can make your inspections faster and more consistent. More importantly, great software can eliminate expensive mistakes and keep your business running like the well-oiled machine it’s meant to be.
So how exactly does having the right manufacturing inspection software help?
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How software can address the most common problems with manufacturing inspections
Eliminating data siloes
If different teams are using different systems or formats to record inspection data, it can be difficult to compare or combine the data, which can hinder collaboration and coordination among teams. This can lead to inefficiencies and potentially even costly mistakes, such as missed defects or incorrect inspections.
A strong inspection software solution helps eliminate siloed data by providing a centralized platform for storing, organizing, and accessing inspection data. With this type of software, inspection teams can enter and record data in a consistent and standardized format, which can make it easier to search, analyze, and share the data across different departments or teams.
Improving communication and notifications
The best quality inspections in the world won’t make a difference if the data isn’t reaching the right people in a timely manner. Perhaps the biggest challenge for manufacturing inspections comes from not having the relevant input information at the right times or places.
A good manufacturing inspection software solution will include a case management system that informs the relevant teams and departments about any incidents happening with the product, people, or equipment during each department's processes.
This issue also extends to reporting: if you don’t have a reporting tool that gives real time data, you won’t be able to address issues as promptly or consistently, which risks significant costs when those issues are overlooked.
Streamlining inspection processes and mitigating errors
Without adequate software tools, inspectors have to manually track and record inspection data (often having to return to a computer for data entry), which can be time-consuming and error-prone. This can lead to slower inspection times and potentially even costly mistakes.
The inspection team may also have limited access to important information and resources, such as manuals, guidelines, and standards, which can hinder their ability to perform inspections effectively. This can result in slower inspection times, and potentially even costly mistakes, such as missed defects or incorrect inspections. Thankfully, these materials can easily be made available on a mobile app, where data is automatically synced across all devices for immediate access.
When inspectors and managers have difficulty organizing or analyzing inspection data, this can make it challenging to identify patterns or trends in the data that could be used to improve the manufacturing process. When this data is stored and processed in a single online location, this type of analysis becomes much simpler, making it easier to monitor inspection progress and identify bottlenecks.
Using manufacturing inspection software to streamline your processes and improve quality control
An effective inspection software solution for manufacturing needs to eliminate data silos, build on your existing workflows to automate them as much as possible, and provide quick and relevant communication across your organization.
That’s where 3Di Engage comes in. 3Di Engage is a cloud-based software platform that empowers manufacturers with custom, enterprise-grade solutions — without the enterprise-grade price tag.
Here are just a few of the things you can expect from 3Di Engage:
- Increased Efficiency — 3Di Engage helps streamline your operations and reduce paperwork. Automate processes, eliminate data silos, speed up communication between teams, and use the advanced mobile app with interactive inspection checklists (which you can quickly create or update as needed). Your team will have more output in a fraction of the time.
- Enhanced Data Analysis Capabilities — our inspection software includes intuitive reporting and analysis features, helping you summarize and analyze your data to identify potential areas for improvement. Having all this data in a single place helps you keep consistent records, and you can spot trends and performance changes using your customized reporting dashboard.
- Improved Quality and Process Standards — 3Di Engage helps manufacturers quickly identify bottlenecks, quality issues, and spot problematic patterns in production. Features like custom interactive checklists help ensure nothing is missed, and automatically alert management about problems that need attention.
Software has improved dramatically in recent years, so many manufacturers have outdated assumptions about why new software might not be for them. While inspection software isn’t meant for every situation, it helps to clear up some of these misconceptions before you decide.
Common misconceptions when considering inspection software for manufacturing
“It’s too expensive to develop/deploy a software solution”
3Di Engage uses turnkey solution accelerators, which form the pre-built foundation for any tools you need. We tailor these to your needs and assemble them as a custom platform, so we aren’t creating the tools from scratch. This translates to a rapidly deployed custom solution, with minimal development costs for you.
Plus, with a non-seat licensing model, your price point doesn’t increase as you add more users.
“It won’t integrate with our current systems”
3Di Engage not only integrates with virtually every system you’re currently using, but it also handles data input from countless different channels, making it easier than ever to manage all your data in a single place. Have a tricky system you don’t think will integrate? We’ll set up a custom integration for you during the implementation process.
“We don’t have the technical expertise or resources to maintain that kind of software”
Since 3Di Engage is fully cloud based, all the maintenance is done on our end. We provide you with ongoing support as part of your subscription, so we’ll quickly address any concerns or requests you may have, and even build out new custom applications as needed.
To learn more about deploying 3Di’s inspection software for your manufacturing, book a free demo today and get any questions answered.
