Quality control checklists have two revered purposes: to outline the organization’s quality requirements and standards that should be met and to set the full criteria for inspecting business, product, or customer quality efficiently. Due to the tough competition in today’s thriving businesses, being a good company is more than just productivity and money but also delivers high-quality assurance at all costs—to-do lists and checklists targeting quality control can make a positive difference.
A quality control (QC) checklist is a detailed document used as the criteria for an inspection checklist, and in business, it is often used for checking the quality of products and services such as monitoring if the product quality standards and requirements are actually met or not. A QC checklist is needed to prevent defective products or services that would bring a bad customer experience. Hence, it is a must-have tool for any organization in delivering top-notch quality in every aspect.
According to Statista’s 2022 research survey, 88% of facility managers preferred task checklists and cleaning schedules for quality control and assurance.
You might be wondering if you should come up with a quality control checklist or not. Rest assured, it is a very essential document in terms of running a business effectively, and these significant reasons prove the value of QC checklists:
A single quality control checklist would be very detailed that it contains a product’s name, packaging, content, color, unique serial number, barcode, and other product descriptions. This is how you ensure that the products for sale would follow stellar quality standards and even for other items such as the quality of your business inventory or office equipment. With that said, all sorts of details about a product or service’s quality will be outlined.
There is no single quality control checklist that works for all types of industries. For example, the quality measures for an insurance business would not be the same as the quality parameters for a car rental business. Car rental businesses would likely check the quality of the used cars if they still run robustly while insurance businesses would check if customers are satisfied enough with the quality of insurance policies and services; expect every QC checklist to be different per industry.
Indeed, using a quality control checklist is standard for implementing quality assurance in your organization. However, you should know that there are so many other tools you can use for conducting quality control such as task schedules, management observations, data analysis, and quality plan software. In fact, around 88% of facility managers manage quality control through task checklists and cleaning schedules; find the niche that works for your business.
Every company has its own quality control plan. Using the QC checklist itself is one proper way of making sure that the QC plan is actually executed. Hence, regularly use the quality control checklist because it not only goes in line with your company’s quality requirements but also avoids defects, poor quality, and quality control issues in your business that could affect your brand negatively.
Criticizing whether a company has followed the quality standards or not after monitoring with the quality control checklist is not enough. There will be solutions planned out in case quality control problems such as defective products are found during regular inspections. Just like an improvement plan, expect certain adjustments planned out once the QC inspection process identifies issues that need to be fixed.
What makes a proper quality control checklist? In this segment, you will be introduced to the five main elements of a QC checklist including why they matter in the process.
Quality control matters a lot in any business especially since it concerns a lot such as product requirements, sales, budget, and the target audience. Make sure to come up with an excellent quality control checklist that suits your business needs, and you may do so using the following steps:
First things first, it helps to do research or get a background statement about the potential defects to be expected in the industry you’re working in. For example, a fashion doll manufacturing business may expect quality control issues related to poor doll joint articulation, balding of the doll’s hair, misprinted doll makeup, or loose buttons on the doll’s miniature clothes. The point here is that being alarmed about possible defects in the products you deal with helps you prepare on what aspects to ensure excellent product quality in your business; you can prevent QC issues before they would be noticed during an inspection.
Next, view all the sample quality control checklist templates in this article and optimize a free template of your choice. Each sample is easy to edit so you simply observe a few alterations to make the QC checklist your own. Then, you can personalize the content such as naming the quality control checklist with your company’s full name and contact list, inserting the unique criteria fitted to your quality standards, etc. Customize a sample QC control checklist now!
A quality control checklist should be easy to follow and you can achieve that by arranging the details of your checklist into favorable sections. A simple reference would be the five elements of a quality control checklist, as previously tackled; meaning you divide the content of your checklist from the product requirements down to the collaboration section. You may also incorporate other parts to your QC checklist that you think are relevant to your business.
Remember that collaborating with quality control experts is standard in the whole quality assurance inspection. That means you should at least talk with suppliers, product examiners, or the entire QC department to meet objectives such as making sure the parts you want to be inspected include other essential parts that are recommended by experts. In fact, hearing out from the pros would let you learn how to apply highly effective methods for quality assurance and the same goes for correcting your QC checklist.
Just like any type of task checklist, you can forget about the checkboxes. Each box is where you mark any step or criterion you have already done or checked. The standard is to put a checkbox beside each criterion and you may put options on whether the QC checklist item is a pass or a fail. You may include other average checklist elements too such as notes and the time and date.
Finally, set a regular schedule on when to conduct quality control inspections of your products or services. Whether you opt for a quality control inspection on a yearly, monthly, or weekly schedule, what matters the most is you commit to a realistic and effective schedule to do inspections. Rest assured, those regular inspections would improve your business such as lessening the chances of defects in your product’s quality.
In a quality control checklist, expect the product requirements section to inspect the material or construction, product measurements, color requirements, and labeling or markings.
Most quality control inspection reports perform the following essential tests: visual inspection, packaging and labeling, functional testing, physical requirements, barcode verification, packaging drop tests, and many other special tests depending on the type of product to test.
According to Investopedia, there are four basic types of quality control and these are the x-bar chart, six sigma, 100% inspection process, and the Taguchi method.
These are quality planning, quality control, quality assurance, and quality development.
Setting your own quality control parameters that work well for the company is no easy feat; however, it is still attainable with a solid quality control checklist. Depend on a QC checklist anytime so that strategic plans that come in handy to fix quality control issues and improve the quality of your business play out naturally. In fact, you don’t need to work from scratch in formulating a QC checklist; simply download and optimize a sample quality control checklist template.
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