Introduction

In our previous blogs we discussed the added value IT has in the wire & cable industry for Product Engineering and Quoting, for Sales and Invoicing and Planning. We will now explore how to improve business performance by investing in IT for Quality Assurance.

The (increasing) product regulation in the wire & cable industry translates in a significant number of quality tests that need to be executed for different cable types. These tests can include multiple measurements and can be applicable for every drum, for a sample test depending on volume or time. The processes related to Quality Assurance can be very time consuming

Again, IT can help to reduce the time and costs related to these processes. How?

• ERP and MES systems can automatically generate quality jobs with the required measurements, based on the setup that has been defined for the product (family).
• In addition the ERP and MES systems can be integrated to the engineering system to automatically populate the measurements with the norm values and it tolerances as defined by the engineering team.
• The results of the quality measurements again can be fed back to the engineering system to close the loop of continuous improvement.

In conclusion: the increasing influence of IT in the wire & cable industry

Finally let’s consider an example of the application of IT that is specific for the optical fiber cable industry. Industry specific ERP can be used to automatically register, validate and grade fibers that are received from the vendor. Using the file of the vendor that contains the unique properties of each fiber, the system can automatically validate these properties against the applicable tolerances.

IT can create significant time savings in the area of Quality Assurance. This will improve the margin for the company.

In our next blog we will discuss how IT can contribute to Warehousing and Logistics.