Five tips to maintain quality control in multi-site businesses

Quality control is one of the most important aspects of running a successful business. If your products or services are of poor quality, you’ll lose customers and likely fail. Quality control is a complex process, and it can be challenging to maintain it in a multi-site business. But don’t worry, we’re here to help. 

In this article, we’ll give you five tips on how to maintain quality control in a multi-site business.

‍

Create quality standards

Quality standards are guidelines that define the quality of products your business produces. They should be outlined for each product or service you offer. This will ensure that you maintain consistent quality control in your company. 

For example, let’s say a client asks you to produce 1000 pcs of a specific product. If you can’t produce each of those 1000 pcs with a specific quality standard, you will most likely be fined or lose that client as a customer. That’s because the client relies on you to create the best quality product possible under the given circumstances. 

Quality standards can be tricky to create since every business is different. However, certain factors tend to affect the quality of a product. These factors include materials, manufacturing process, design, location, people and environment.

‍

Train your employees

Every person in your company should know what “QCS” stands for; Quality Control Standards. You can train your employees on how to make quality checks on materials, manufacturing processes, design, etc. You can also train them on how they can improve the quality of their work if they notice something is wrong. 

Training employees on QCS will not only help you maintain consistent quality control, but it will also save you a lot of time when it comes to resolving quality issues. You don’t necessarily need to hire specialised people to train your employees on QCS, you can do it yourself. QCS training programs can be quite easy to create once you have the standards documented and you have an excellent LMS (Learning Management System) on your side. 

If you're struggling to get started with QCS training programs, there will likely be sample or actual industry-specific training programs you can purchase online or you can hire a QCS training expert to help you develop robust programs and train your employees.

‍

Use technology to assist in quality control

One of the best ways to maintain consistent quality control in a multi-site business is by using software that is specially designed for QCS. This software can help you audit your locations and assess them on several factors from product appearance, to store layout, to level of service provided by a team member. These quality control audits can show you areas of concern, where quality standards are being upheld and where standards haven’t been created, but potentially need to. 

These insights can help you to make changes and additions to your standards, applaud the sites that are upholding standards and address those areas of concern (if there are any).  

‍

Track and analyse quality data

The key to maintaining quality control is taking action on your observations. Any problems identified should always be reported and actioned quickly. The data you collect from your audits is extremely valuable and there is no point in conducting the audits at all if you aren’t going to use the data.

The data you collect can be used to identify patterns in quality control problems and help you anticipate potential issues with your business. These quality analyses can also be used to identify where the causes of quality control problems lie. Your quality analyses should be done with real-time monitoring software. It’s important to note that the right people on your team should be analysing this data. That might be managers, a specific quality control officer or a quality control team.

‍

Implement corrective action

So you have the quality control data and you have analysed it, now what? It’s time to implement some changes! Whether that’s fixing some problem areas that have been uncovered, creating new or editing old standards or even re-training staff, you need to get on top of these changes right away. By leaving things too late (or not even addressing them at all), you can put yourself in danger of losing business, losing profits and maybe even getting some really bad reviews - and I’m sure you already know of the power of reviews! 

‍

Conclusion

Quality control is much easier to maintain when you have the right standards, tools and team on your side. With these tips, you’re now ready to be a quality control connoisseur!

If you’re ready to take quality control into your own hands, find out more about how Ideagen Op Central’s system has helped others with quality control.