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Archive for November, 2010
The cost of quality in manufacturing
Nov 29th
The cost of quality, or perhaps costs associated with poor quality, is a common discussion point within many UK board rooms today. With unrivalled manufacturing growth in the Far East, mass produced items do not always represent the best quality but do very often tempt customers with very low prices. How can we compete in the UK? One approach is to offer a higher quality product, that is more durable, reliable and with a potentially longer service life.
The management of quality within production environments is not easy, all too often regarded as a cost to the business, rather than a potential saving when the cost of product failure and returns is taken into consideration. The experience at Ardent Solutions when implementing business systems into organisations is that quality systems typically grow out of necessity, perhaps driven by a specific historic failure in the process. All too often this can result in quality systems that are isolated from core business systems, introducing duplication of effort maintaining data, and a lack of visibility to the business as a whole.
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 features a quality module, embedded into core business processes of the system. Rule driven quality associations automatically create relationships between specific system transactions. Throughout a complete supply chain, the quality module within Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 has the ability to automatically create quality orders, holding specific transactions and requiring specific quality operations to be completed. Consider a supplier that consistently delivers sub standard materials that sometimes inadvertently get released into production. This can be controlled at the point of receipt, automatically quarantining the raw materials until the quality process has been carried out. Consider a specific operation on your shop floor that has the potential to introduce reliability issues to the finished product. Again, this can be controlled within Microsoft Dynamics AX2009, automatically generating quality orders for specific production operations or processes. Where quality orders identify a problem, this can be documented as a non conformance with corrective actions to address the quality issue. All of these transactions can then be reported upon, providing the information to continually engineer higher quality into your products. The question isn’t how much quality costs but how much quality improvements can increase profitability. This functionality is available as standard within Microsoft Dynamics AX2009.
Related Posts:
In economics what will be the impact of the emerging BRIC markets?
Nov 8th
The new acronym BRIC’s stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China. BRIC’s was coined by an investment banker who was looking for a quick way to sum up the geographical spread of investment opportunities in the emerging economies.
With the growth in these emerging new markets could this change the patterns of world trade? Are they the next big investment prospects? Will they outperform the old traditional established economy of the West? These are the questions of leading analysts at the moment.
Should we fear or embrace these emerging markets? Analysts agree that one thing is constant – if your customers are still looking for good products and good service then surely we all have something to offer.
Good product and good service is still a key pillar in business today. So will you choose to work with a local partner in these countries to get a foothold in these emerging markets or will organisations shy away from what is happening in the new world order - asks economists today.
On the basis you have a strategy, how do you collaborate with your new found partners or agents? Is your company geared to manage and support such a change?
Do you have the right infrastructure to support these ventures remembering that infrastructure doesn’t just revolve around IT, it is people as well!
Are your business processes and strategies able to cope and sustain long-term business relationships?
Analysts discuss how established businesses need to plan and embrace these new markets. They talk about decoupling – this is where these emerging markets are no longer dependent on the markets of the economic clout of the West, but as we all climb out of recession the traditional markets are still needed and still play a major part of the global business arena.
Many agree that with the value of a pound at the level it is an increase in exports into traditional markets is still needed whilst looking at theses emerging markets.
Luis Alberto Moreno – Presidents of the Inter -American Development Bank believes optimism is a key part of helping to sustain growth, “it is this optimistic approach the companies who believe and think that they are moving in the right direction that will instill the confidence that will translate across the whole of society and will impact the economy as a whole”.
Exploring these emerging markets will require a strategy, a plan, a long-term view. Will your existing infrastructure and company processes support these ventures?
This is where many businesses will turn to IT as one aspect to assist this change and streamline business processes, take waste of their business, tap into the power of the WEB to help facilitate such ventures by lowering the overall risk to deploy their business solutions as a key element in the overall infrastructure of working alongside their new found partners.
