Guide to How Manufacturers Can Implement Quality Control Systems Using Business Central

Poor manufacturing quality can damage your brand and leave customers unhappy. If you have inefficient, siloed systems, you could face product defects, late orders, waste, and other challenges. 

In today’s manufacturing environment, businesses need to face the demands of increasingly sophisticated customers while experiencing labor shortages, shrinking resources, rising costs, and, in some industries, unexpected regulatory audits. Ensuring quality products in these conditions is possible, but you need a quality control system that works.

The components of a great quality management system

A quality control system is a part of production that ensures product integrity, largely using inspections at various stages of the manufacturing process. At its most basic, quality control involves:

1. Deciding on standards: You may measure specifications against ISO 9001, a government agency’s standards, general manufacturing practice standards, or another framework.
2. Selecting a method: You might choose to inspect random samples of product, use Six Sigma statistical methods, or implement another method that aligns with your industry. 
3. Developing a system: Your business will need a formal inspection process, based on the standards and the method you’re using. You’ll need to train your staff to ensure consistent inspections. 
4. Testing and action: You’ll need to choose what gets tested and when, and then implement your process. You must have a system to analyze the results and then determine what steps to take based on those results. 

How do enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms work for quality control?

While it’s possible to buy software dedicated solely to quality control, a modern ERP system combines multiple functionalities for manufacturers. Having all your key data in one spot helps your quality control system:

• Enhance communication: If an inspection finds an issue, it’s easy to communicate with manufacturing and decision-makers. 
• Make quicker decisions: If a batch is rejected, you can automatically track and send data or even set up automatic alerts so decision-makers can take action quickly. 
• Automate and execute plans: Software lets you schedule and set up inspections. It automatically prompts inspectors and highlights established regulatory criteria, ensuring compliance. ERPs can also automatically analyze data to find ways to optimize operations for quality and compliance. 
• Keep all your documentation in one place: For compliance, all your data and reports are in one location, ready for deployment. You can update and examine different versions of documents, approve reports, and even electronically sign them to keep production moving.
• Customize your inspections with templates: ERP platforms offer templates and automatically populated inspection reports and checklists that can serve as the basis for your own. Customize them to create a tailored inspection in less time.
• Trace actions: In an ERP, you can easily assign inspections and tasks, and then see who completed what actions and when. You get full visibility of the quality control process.

Centralize quality management with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Outdated systems can lead to manual data entry, inaccuracies, and time-consuming processes that are difficult to scale. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a highly customizable ERP offering robust functionality for small- to midsized manufacturers, including quality control, sales, finance, customer service, commerce, HR, scheduling, supply chain, and more, all in one platform. Through an extensive extension marketplace, Business Central lets you add extensions that offer even more functionality. 

One of the biggest benefits is that Business Central can set up and help you execute many types of inspections quickly. You may need to conduct visual inspections of products arriving at the warehouse, send off some of your products for testing with a third party, and keep components within specific temperatures or sizes. Business Central can help you manage all your different inspections in minutes. 

Business Central also helps you:

• Gain supply chain visibility: If a supplier has a recall for a specific component used in your products, you can easily trace which products in your manufacturing system are affected.
• Communicate with vendors: If you outsource inspections or use labs for some inspections, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central makes it easy to communicate with these parties and track their progress. 
• Automate some compliance tasks: You can set the system up to only accept orders from suppliers with valid, required certificates or to get alerts when specific inspections fail. The system integrates with purchase orders, too.
• Manage multilocation production: If you have multiple facilities, you can track inspections across them in a single platform. You can also see all locations of a specific lot, batch, or serial-numbered product, which can help you manage recalls or stop production.
• Access information in real time: You can trace lot and serial numbers in real time across the entire supply chain. Create audit trails for the FDA and other regulatory bodies and secure the documentation required for certification. 
• Maintain integrity with role-based security: Business Central ensures only authorized team members can change critical data, see inspection reports, or approve products.
• Get certificates of analysis: Business Central automatically creates shareable, customizable certificates of analysis you can update with graphics.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central now integrates with Copilot. You can get customized answers about your data, AI-generated inspection templates, and automated summaries of your reports. You also have access to AI agents who can create transactions in the system for your review and approval, reducing the time you need to spend on repetitive tasks.

Partner with proven manufacturing ERP Experts

Every business needs to ensure quality products. If you’re interested in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, ArcherPoint by Cherry Bekaert can be the support you need. With over 20 years of experience in translating complex manufacturing operations into targeted software solutions, our experts can help you determine whether Business Central is right for you.

At ArcherPoint, we offer hands-on, role-based training to encourage high user adoption. We make Business Central make sense and help you get the most out of every feature so you can build the highest-quality products. We also keep you AI-ready.

With flexible services, we save you the time and money required to hire an in-house IT team — we offer 24/7 service support plans, software updates, and more.

Modernize your quality control operations today

ArcherPoint has already helped businesses across 14 countries harness the benefits of top workplace solutions, including Business Central. We can help you figure out how to make quality control integral and automatic. Schedule a free consultation today with our expert team to learn more.

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