Benchmarking

Quality is Essential: Are You Doing Enough?

By Tony Robinson, analytics director, ARPM

Most, if not all, manufacturers advertise quality as a top priority. This characteristic is shown on company websites, pamphlets, social media and other forms of marketing. Customers demand a certain level of quality in their parts, or they will take their business elsewhere. However, meeting customer standards and striving for the highest quality possible are two very different things.

This begs the question: how do companies that successfully prioritize quality compare to companies that meet the bare minimum? In other words, do companies that work to improve quality internally perform better than those who do not? and plastics processing industries. When examining this metric segmented by market served, companies serving the automotive sector had the lowest average AQL (Chart 1).

The answer may seem obvious, but to provide better insight, the Association for Rubber Products Manufacturers (ARPM) conducted an industry analysis and published its 2022 Production & Quality Report in March. This report dives into a variety of key performance indicators (KPIs) to benchmark production and quality performance in both the rubber and plastics industries. It is important to note that KPIs analyzed in the report are not necessarily measured by all manufacturers, and it is the decision of the manufacturer to determine how performance is measured. One straightforward metric for examining a facility’s quality standards is to view its acceptable quality level (AQL), or the percentage of defects considered acceptable in a sample batch of a manufactured product. The average AQL reported was 2%, which provides for a better statistical understanding of performance of manufacturers in the rubber Chart 1. Even if a facility meets its own internal standards, customers may still find issues. Eighty-four percent of survey respondents track customer complaints, and on average, processors received 23 customer complaints in 2021. Despite having the lowest average AQL, processors serving the automotive sector also received more customer complaints on average (about 35), much higher than the industry average. This is a testament to the rigorous standards of major automotive companies. Overall, a manufacturer can consider itself best-in-class if it receives fewer than 10 complaints a year (Chart 2).

Chart 3.

To increase quality and improve customer satisfaction, manufacturers have a variety of continuous improvement tools, but internal audits are used in some form by most manufacturers (79%). An internal quality audit is basically a verification activity aimed at evaluating the degree of conformance to a standard specification or procedure of the design, product, process or system. Of those companies that reported performing internal audits in 2021, 12 audits were conducted on average at respondent facilities. Unsurprisingly, the correlated data indicated that as facility personnel increased the number of audits, the number of customer complaints decreased. As can be seen, those facilities that completed 16 or more audits in 2021 received nearly 50% fewer customer complaints (Chart 3).

Returning to the original question, do companies that work to improve quality internally perform better than those who do not? Although this article examined one primary improvement tool, the implementation of internal audits, the data demonstrated a direct correlation to improving overall product quality when viewed by the number of customer complaints received. u

To discover more about quality metric performance in the rubber products industry, obtain ARPM’s full 2022 Production & Quality Report at www.arpminc.com.

PART OF THE BARWELL FAMILY

EFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE DAY & NIGHT

The fully automated Barwell Gear Pump is ideal for long production runs as it provides continuous preforming with minimal operator dependence.

info@barwellusa.com +1 330 225 9557 www.barwellusa.com ...a lifetime of reliability and support