Total Quality Control Management for Microsoft® Axapta

Introduction to

Total Quality Control Management

For Microsoft® Axapta

Trademarks
Microsoft® and Microsoft® Axapta are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other
trademarks are trademarks of their respective holders.

Proprietary Information
This document it the property of ERP Solutions.biz, Eden Prairie, MN USA.

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Introduction
Global competitiveness is changing the way organizations around the world are doing
business. Quality is leading this change and today’s businesses need to adopt quality
standards which will improve the quality of products and services to maintain their
competitive edge. ISO 9000 provides a worldwide guideline to businesses for development
of quality standards, administration of those standards, and the control of their products,
operations, and services. It provides the accreditation in quality that is necessary for
companies to expand their global presence and seek new customers.

Numerous software applications for quality control are available in today’s market. Most
solutions are independent applications written specifically for quality control and do not
provide the integration to other applications such as manufacturing or accounting.

The ISO 9000 Quality Assurance Model defines three basic areas: administration and control
of your quality system; the steps to realizing your product or service; and the necessary
support activities. To effectively achieve this model businesses need ERP solutions that
provide these basic areas of quality assurance as well as the integration to other areas of
operation. Total Quality Control Management (TQCM) has been designed with
functionality based upon the model and standards of ISO 9000. It is developed under the
best practice guidelines set by Microsoft for Axapta and provides ISO 9000 standards with
the same interface, features, flexibility and true integration as other Microsoft Axapta
Modules.

Individually there are 20 clauses that describe ISO requirements in quality control. These
requirements are shown in figure 1.

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Administration & Control Product Realization Support Activities

Management Contract Review Corrective and

Responsibility Preventive Action

Quality System Design Control Internal Quality

Audits

Document and Data Purchasing Training

Control

Product Identification Control of Customer Statistical Techniques

& Traceability Supplied Product

Control of Inspection, Process Control

Measurement, and
Test Equipment

Inspection and Test Inspection and

Status Testing

Control of Handling, Storage,

Nonconforming Packaging,
Product Preservation, and
Delivery

Control of Quality Servicing

Records

Figure 1; ISO Quality Assurance Model

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Inspections and Investigations

TQCM provides these primary areas of quality control management:

• Inspections
• Investigations
• Item Accreditations
• Posting
• Reporting
• Document and Certificate Management
• Instrument, Tool, and Machine Calibration
• Sample Lot Testing
• Historical quality Data

Inspections and Investigations

In TQCM, inspections are the process for carrying out investigations. Investigations provide
the steps and procedures for the inspection and document the results of the inspection.
When performing inspections, the inspector will call on an investigation associated to the
product, process, operation, instrument, or machine to be inspected.

Inspections can be performed either through a staged requirement of a process such as

incoming purchased items, or randomly selected at the will of the quality control
department. TQCM provides automated associations for inspections and will automatically
associated the appropriate investigation. Investigations can have circular associations with
customers, vendors, internal, and tool.

Inspections can be:

• Pre Arrival Purchase Incoming
• Purchase Incoming
• Accreditation
• Tool
• In Process Production
• Production Final
• Customer Pre-ship
• Post Customer Ship Investigation
• Random

Investigations can be associated as follows:

• Vend Table – Vendor
- All
- Group
• Cust Table - Customer
- All
- Group
• Internal

These associations, above, can be related to:

• Item (Product)
• Tool
• Operation in a production route

Inspections and Investigations are associated. Purchase incoming inspections can be

associated by vendor in three formats; vendor specific, vendor group, or for all vendors.

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Inspection Associations
Purchase Incoming Associations
Vendor Specific; vendor specific means that an item requiring purchase incoming inspection
will be associated to an investigation. You associate a vendor to an item and to an
investigation. You can have multiple vendors associated to a single item and a single
investigation; or have multiple vendors associated to a single item associating a separate
investigation to each vendor.

It may be the case where you have your own product produced by multiple subcontractors.
Perhaps one subcontractor has poorer quality than the others. In this case you can
associate more stringent and comprehensive investigations for this specific vendor.

All; all means that all vendors associated to an item will have one associated investigation.

Vendor Group; where you have purchased items that are purchased from several vendors,
you can create a group and associate the appropriate item, vendor, and investigation to the
group. This may be a case where you are purchasing components from distributors, who
are not the actual manufacturer, and typically the components will follow the same
investigations.

Investigations
Vendor Group
(Multiple Groups)

Purchased Item Specific Vendor Investigations

(Multiple Vendors)

All Vendors Investigation

Figure 2; Investigation Associations, Purchase

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Production Incoming Associations

Incoming inspection from production as well may have associations similar to the process
described for incoming purchasing. These associations are by Customer Specific, Customer
Group, or all. Figure 3 shows these associations:

Investigations
Customer Group
(Multiple Groups)

Manufactured Item Specific Customer Investigations

(Multiple Customers)

All Customers Investigation

Figure 3; Incoming Production Associations

Points in your manufacturing process can have inspection points as well:

Investigations
Customer Group
(Multiple Groups)

IPIP Specific Customer Investigations

(Multiple Customers)

All Customers Investigation

Figure 4; Production, In Process Inspection Points (IPIP) Associations

The Inspection Process

TQCM provides the full circular inspection process with investigations occurring before your
vendor ships materials to your facilities, as well as post shipment investigations after
products have been delivered to your customers.

This full circular process provides a comprehensive quality historical record of your products
and processes. TQCM can also be interfaced to machine testing equipment to provide
automatic statistics typical in SPC (Statistical Process Control) environments through
Microsoft COM. These environments will typically require the services of a Microsoft
Business Partner to build the connectivity between Axapta and the PLC. As TQCM
incorporates transactional tables for the accumulation of investigations and their results,
manufacturers can adapt the investigations to their company specific data. SPC provides an

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automated approach to quality control as well as the tools to control a process. For example
an automated test instrument may be gauging the tolerance of a machined hole. In this
example the hole must maintain a specific tolerance and the tolerances for each piece is
reported. A degrading tolerance can indicate wear in a tool and TQCM, through the Axapta
MorphX Tool Set, can message an alarm to the appropriate quality manager.

Pre Arrival Purchasing Incoming

For many manufacturers, the inspection process begins before their raw materials arrive at
their facilities. This is typical for items produced off shore where transit times are measured
in weeks versus days. With TQCM you can have investigations performed right within
Axapta prior to the purchased item being received into you inventory. This can be
performed on site or through the Axapta Enterprise Portal.

Purchasing Incoming
Purchased items can be inspected prior to receiving into inventory or after receipt into
inventory. This depends upon a companies specific operating standards. With TQCM you
have both options.

Item Accreditations
Items may require specific accreditations as well as the standard investigation. TQCM
permits you to set accreditations for multiple standards at the item table including UL, CSA,
FAA, FDA, and others. These fields can also be renamed to other standards. With
accreditations you associate an investigation for specific or multiple accreditations. This
provides companies historical records of their investigations as well as the associated
accreditations.

Tool
Tools, machines, instruments, etc. can all be setup for inspections and certifications. This
will be described in a later section of this document.

In Process Inspections
In process production in TQCM is referred as In Process Inspection Points (IPIP). These
are points established at specific steps in manufacturing where inspection of the specific
point of an operation in a production route is required. For example, you may be producing
ball bearings and the production process requires that the ball housing meets a min/max
tolerance when they are machined. Through IPIP you insert an inspection at that operation
in the production route for an investigation. This is an operational inspection that in some
cases may be carried out by a machine operator. With TQCM Investigations, you can permit
the investigation to be opened and closed by an operator, or call for a quality managers
signature. This is true of all investigations in TQCM. Investigations can be opened and
closed by an inspector and/or require the signature and verification of a quality manager.
More information on investigations will be provided later in this document.

IPIP is a powerful feature of TQCM providing the ability to have customer specific
investigations within a manufacturing process. For example you may have a finished
product with a standard inspection investigation, but within the manufacturing process you
may have a inspection step specific to a customer. Perhaps this customer requires tighter
tolerances or may just require certification that the investigation was performed. TQCM
permits you to have associations to customers throughout the manufacturing process.

Production Final
In coming production inspection is similar in process to incoming purchasing, but, you are
investigating a manufactured item.

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Customer Pre ship

With TQCM you can perform a customer pre ship investigation. This could be by request by
specific customers or perhaps you may want to inspect all shipments for your new
customers. It might also be used to provide a customer a non conforming part. For
example you may not have in stock a specific item a customer requires. You have one
similar and the customer will permit shipment of this item in replacement of the required
item if it meets specific specifications.

Post Customer Shipment Investigation

Some companies may have equipment in the field that requires inspections or service. Or it
may be an item in which the customer states is in a nonconforming state for which you
dispatch a field inspector. You can perform onsite inspections with TQCM through Axapta’s
Enterprise Portal.

Instrument Calibration
Quality control instruments, tools, machines and other pieces of equipment in
manufacturing companies require calibration and maintenance. TQCM provides functionality
to schedule these procedures.

TQCM incorporates complete functionality for scheduling calibration tests of instruments and
the maintenance of tools, machines, and other equipment. With Instrument calibration you
can track instrument certificates with complete historical records of certification through
integrated maintenance logs.

The Instrument Calibration Table also permits you to issue Risk Instrument Notifications
based upon the maintenance or certification which are safety and operation notifications to
operators. Instrument Calibration is integrated to investigations so inspections can be
scheduled for calibration and maintenance with the same process used in standard quality
inspections. Inspection results are posted to the quality inspection transaction table.

Standard Order Procedures

ISO Standard Order Procedures are created and maintained in TQCM. With this feature you
establish and maintain the controls of window compatible associated documents with
document dating, approvals, and revision levels.

Standard Order Procedures in TQCM also permit you to build workflow templates for the
processing and notifications of Nonconformance Reports. Through this feature you build
stepped processes with workgroups associated to each step that will be used when
nonconformance reports are created. One example would be in reviewing customer
shortages; in this example a customer reports in a recent shipment that the accompanying
packing list states two pieces shipped. However, their count of the shipment found only
one. When the nonconforming condition is reported, the supplier can launch the Standard
Order Procedure for “Customer Shortages”. This may include a step for inventory control to
perform a count to determine if inventory reflects inventory out of balance by the shortage
quantity reported by the customer. It may also include a step for the shipping department
to compare the weight of the package for two pieces versus one.

Nonconformance Reports
Nonconformance reports in TQCM provide you capability to create, report, and track the
reports of nonconforming conditions in components and products.

Nonconformance reports can be created from an inspection process, automatically from a

sales order, or manually created. The reports consist of the base data providing the

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condition of nonconformance including the associated information from where the

nonconformance was derived. When created from the manufacturing floor from a
production inspection, TQCM will automatically bring in the relationship to item, production
order, operation, batch/serial number (when applicable) and other details. This same data
will be associated when derived from purchasing and sales.

As nonconformance reports are created, they are reviewed by the appropriate QC personnel
who associate’s a Standard Order Procedure (SOP) workflow relative to the subject of the
nonconformance. The SOP workflow can be modified with steps added or deleted on-the-fly
specifically for that nonconformance without changing the SOP workflow templates.

In TQCM, Nonconformance Reports provides a worksheet for quality control personnel to

work on the condition with accumulated data and steps to act upon the nonconformance. In
this area, re-inspections can occur, verification of data, and direction for next steps of
actions.

Corrective Actions
When a nonconformance condition is confirmed, the next step is to correct the condition.
TQCM Corrective Actions permit you to directly convert a nonconformance report into a
corrective action bringing into the corrective action all of the relevant data and details. This
is the form that documents the action taken to correct the nonconforming condition. It
provides the historical record of the corrective action with associations to the related
modules in Axapta.

Sample Lot Testing

TQCM provides the capability to create sample lots for testing. Sample lots are the standard
for testing or measuring of items that you purchase and/or manufacture. With TQCM you
create a sample lot table for an item based upon standards you set and that this item must
achieve. When an inspection journal is created, the inspector can retrieve the sample lot
table that is adjusted based upon the actual configuration and quantities of the incoming
purchase order, in process inspection point, incoming production, or customer pre-ship
investigation.

The sample lot investigation will advise the inspector the quantity of items of the incoming
or in process lot that must be inspected. It will automatically check the AQL (Acceptable
Quality Level) established in the sample lot standards and pass or fail an inspection based
upon AQL. Its flexibility provides the inspector the ability to continue inspection of the lot to
achieve a higher AQL to pass the specific lot.

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