Manufacturing

CTQs (Critical To Quality) are the key measurable characteristics of the product whose performance standards or specification limits must be met in order to satisfy the customer. These outputs represent the product or service characteristics defined by the customer (internal or external). As already mentioned, SFO develops a detailed Process Flow, FMEA, Control Plan, Testing Procedures & Work Instruction for each product, clearly specifying the measurement method, acceptance criteria, and recovery plan. All the CTQ’s are addressed in this documentation.

Before production of each product commences, the product realization plan is benchmarked with data/defect details from previous similar production runs and processes are corrected as required.

Monitoring & measurement of Process & Products is carried out at different stages of the operation, such as the Incoming stage, the In-process stage, the Testing stage and the Final stage. In each stage, based on the customer requirement, we make use of different Inspection machines & Test equipment.

A proper mechanism based on the software – Production Management System – ensures that only the accepted products get passed to the next stage.

Quality indicators like Yield, DPMO (Defect Per Million Operations), DPPM (Defective Parts Per Million), SPC trends etc are defined and monitored online using software tools like the Production Management System (PMS), Electronic Device Health Records (EDHR), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), etc.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are displayed on large panel displays near Managers cabin for “Live” monitoring and review. Cost of poor Quality is routinely measured as part of QC and discussed in the Management Review Meeting (MRM).

Such stringent QA & QC practices ensure that our products are in compliance with International Standards like UL certification, RoHS (Restrictions on Hazardous Substances) and REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation & Restriction on Chemicals). We also issue Certificate of compliance along with each shipment based on customer specification.

SFO is striving constantly to improve the quality of our processes, products, and services. Our quality programs are perpetually in a continuous improvement mode and geared towards implementation of 6 Sigma, Lean manufacturing, Kaizen and 5s paradigms. The move towards Industry 4.0 is on a fast-track mode, with data analytics and IoT transforming the assembly lines.