London, August 2, 2017: Quality continues to be a mission-critical initiative for manufacturers across products, manufacturing, supply chain, and service. Increasingly, as products, demands, and value chains become more complex, manufacturers are looking at quality more strategically to adopt an enterprise quality management view that encompasses each segment of quality in the organization. A new IDC PeerScape: Practices for Quality Management, outlines current implementations and best practices for quality management.

“What is clear is that manufacturers realize that quality information can no longer exist siloed in their organizations: this means that the quality team and information flow from products, manufacturing, supply chain, and service must be embedded into the relevant part of their business for rapid decision support. These decisions can be reactive when a quality issue arises, or predictive, using analytics to determine when there will be a need for maintenance, engineering change, or process optimization,” said Jeff Hojlo, program director, Product Innovation Strategies.

IDC recommends that creating a reliable feedback loop, leveraging the shop floor for quality insights, enabling collaborative resolution, ensuring quality along the supply chain, and establishing enterprise quality management are all focus areas and best practices for quality.

According to IDC Manufacturing Insights, despite the efforts and technologies companies have been constantly putting toward the subject, the real gap today is that this is still a siloed discipline:

• In product development, quality objectives are product-centric, scientifically or perception-based and are directly linked to the product design features.
• In manufacturing, quality is a key component of OEE metrics and can be summarized in a holistic way as “zero defects, zero waste, and zero harm, at the right cost.”
• In supply chain, the shipping, picking, and storage of products impacts their final quality. At the same time, recalls, repair and service activities, and reverse logistics are a significant contributor to supply chain complexities.
• In service, companies realize that ensuring a good customer experience through quality products and service delivery is a business differentiator and driver. The service life cycle needs to include analysis of information coming from the product while in use, monitoring of social media channels, and supervision of after-sales networks.

For additional information about this report or to arrange a one-on-one briefing with an IDC analyst, please contact your IDC account manager or email kanupriya@idc.com