TECHNOLOGY

MANUFACTURERS LIVE , EAT and breathe quality when it comes to practices and processes such as lean , Six Sigma and metrology .

It seems strange then that the quality of the IT systems , including ERP , PLM , MES or CAD , that underpin an entire manufacturing business , is not afforded the same importance .

Feast or famine Entry-level IT quality in the manufacturing sector is focused on detecting high-risk defects before they cause damage .

Traditionally , IT quality has relied on the time-consuming manual testing efforts of large teams drawn from several departments across the manufacturing business . This manual testing effort reduces overall productivity during the testing phase , while re-testing in response to changes can be prohibitively expensive .

However , if testing is not conducted , the risk of introducing a regression into the software is high . Therefore an entry-level approach to IT quality leads to change being deferred until it becomes unavoidable through obsolescence or lack of competitiveness . With this feast or famine approach , the IT department often becomes the bottleneck to change within a manufacturing business .

Ideally , defects can be prevented through the introduction of an effective quality management regime covering the entire software lifecycle , from requirements validation to production monitoring . A key part of this process

involves significant amounts of regression testing , so that any new change will not have a negative impact on key business processes . Improving quality costs money and spending more money on quality will eventually result in diminishing returns . Therefore it is necessary to apply control to the investment in quality based on an assessment of risks to the manufacturing business .

Quality is also about effective

8 November 2015