Purpose

When you process an inspection lot, you can record the results for the inspection in the form of characteristic values or defects. A defect is any property or attribute of a material, product or process that does not meet the inspection characteristic specifications. You record the defects with the help of predefined defect codes maintained in the inspection catalogs.

Implementation Considerations

The need to record defects depends on the manufactured product and the production process. Defect records can serve as a valuable source of information for quality control in many different production environments. They allow you to improve quality and optimize processes, while reducing costs and increasing productivity. Defects recording is primarily used in the following areas:

Defects recording is a very important tool for the production of complex products or systems (for example, electronic equipment, cars and industrial machinery). In this area, a consistently high product quality level can only be maintained if the defects are kept to a minimum or eliminated altogether. Defect records are required to identify quality problems in the production process and to comprehensively evaluate the defect data (for example, the total number of all defects, the total number of defects categorized by defect type, a valuation of defects based on various factors such as location, seriousness, etc.).

In the production of less complex, single parts such as nuts, bolts, or bearings, you are likely to record both characteristic values and defects. For example, a manufacturer of ball bearings may record characteristic values for the bearing diameter, as well as the defects that affect the quality of the bearing material.

Features

You can record defects in the form of defect records using the Quality Management component. You can analyze defects and their causes on the basis of defect records. You can determine what corrective action is necessary to eliminate the defect cause and prevent them from recurring. Defect records can be created in the following ways:

Once a defect record has been created, it is saved in the system as a quality notification. A quality notification is a system-supported problem message that you can use to process different types of problems relating to poor-quality goods or services. Quality notifications are processed in the Quality Notifications component.

Information in a Defect Record

A defect record may contain all or part of the following information: