Our QC Department performs incoming, in-process, and outgoing inspections and ensures supplier quality. In addition to meeting IPC610 requirements, we add additional inspection points, including customer-specific ones. Keep reading to learn more.
Why ISO is Not Enough
Z-AXIS has been ISO 9001 certified for 16 years. That demonstrates our commitment to quality, but we do more than meet ISO’s minimum requirements for a quality management system.
Because Z-AXIS serves the medical and aerospace industries, we build complex products that require strict quality control. Our QC Department carefully inspects what we make, and they also ensure supplier quality.
Incoming Inspections for Built-to-Print Parts
Today, many electronics manufacturers often move all incoming parts from dock-to-stock, as it’s known. At Z-AXIS, we perform incoming inspections for built-to-print parts before moving them to inventory until these parts have a proven quality.
This gets us a higher quality product, but we also learn if there’s a gap between what our design engineer specified and what a supplier can achieve. If there is, QC feeds this back to Design Engineering for continuous improvement.
In-Process and Outgoing Inspectdions
Our QC Department also performs in-process inspections, often multiple times. For example, if an assembly uses both surface mount and through hole parts, it’s inspected at each step of the way.
Outgoing inspections also enable us to find problems. Our part-per-million defect rate has improved consistently over the last 12 years, and Z-AXIS is building more sophisticated products than ever before.
Continuous Improvement and ZIPS
How do we know that quality keeps improving? We evaluate any returned product to determine our outgoing quality. We also track customer-reported issues even when they are not returned.
ZIPS, the Z-AXIS Protocol Inspection System, is an especially valuable tool. QC uses it to define a part’s Critical to Quality, or CTQ, characteristics so that inspectors know exactly what to inspect or measure.
Whether it’s for dimensional requirements or something as straightforward as a cosmetic requirement, QC uses ZIPS for incoming, in-process, and outgoing inspections. QC enters measurements, and ZIPS determines pass/fail.
IPC610 and Customer-Specific Inspection Points
In addition to the IPC610 requirements that we meet, Z-AXIS can add any additional inspection points in ZIPS, including customer-specific requirements. We can also add inspection points to prevent quality escapes, instances where a product passes QC checks but is defective.
With quality control at Z-AXIS, we know we’re inspecting the right things and have a complete record of what we’ve inspected. That’s critical for quality, but it’s also essential for continuous improvement.
Choose Quality Electronics Manufacturing
Are you looking for quality? Contact Z-AXIS to discuss your electronics manufacturing project.