Control Compound Costs of Defects in Manufacturing

Most manufacturing operations run on a tight time, labor, and inventory basis.  Increasing demands for more products sooner can contribute to costly defects in products and logistics if stringent quality controls are not in place.

Defects that go unnoticed or undetected can cause compounding costs your company:

• Waste:  Once identified, the original defective unit will carry additional disposal costs. Without a reliable way to efficiently identify and locate all other affected products, entire lots will need to be disposed at a much higher cost to your company.
• Labor and Materials: The cost of raw materials, production time, labor, and energy are repeated and often at a premium.
• Transportation Costs:  Moving defects within a facility or transporting product to/from your customer costs time and money.
• Storage Costs:  Locating, separating and storing defective product are all added costs that affect profits.
• Customer Satisfaction:  The further along the supply chain a defective product travels, the more visible it will be to your customer. Delays in shipment and replacement cause unhappy customers – not to mention damaging your reputation to deliver.

Bar Code and Labeling Systems Help Control Costly Defects

The earlier the defect is caught, the less damage it can cause. Using bar code and labeling systems for tracking raw materials, finished products,  inventory, and customer shipments can protect your business from compounded problems by:

• identify the source of the defect; raw materials in a job, WIP produced by a job step, or finished product.
• quickly identify and recall only the affected products.
• added time to produce replacement product and make delivery to your customer.
• data is immediately transferred to your ERP system to ensure reorder points, inventory and production schedules are notified of added demands.
• identifying items that require additional QC from those that have been reliably pre-tested do not require costly, duplicate testing.
• serialized and variable data on each product ensures older product is used first before expiring or pulled from inventory when dates have passed.
• accurate labeling ensures use of correct materials and parts.