(ETQ: Burlington, MA) -- ETQ, part of Hexagon, has announced the latest release of its ETQ Reliance NXG quality management system (QMS) software. It features a new Inspection Management app, a breakthrough solution that automates and streamlines the quality inspection process. Discrete and process manufacturers that use hands-on inspections to meet quality standards and compliance requirements can now automate their processes, reduce paperwork, and enable real-time visibility into quality operations—all within an integrated QMS.

“The cost of poor quality continues to rise among today’s manufacturers, not only causing severe financial impact from product recalls, defects, and noncompliance, but also eroding the trust of customers and damaging industry reputation,” says John Taylor, chief technology officer at ETQ. “The launch of the Inspection Management app rounds out our ETQ Reliance offerings and brings a new level of automation, visibility, and control to the quality inspections process and ensures that only quality products reach customers.”

Mitigating cost of poor quality, ensuring compliance at scale

Inspection Management will be offered as an option for new and existing customers of the ETQ Reliance NXG cloud-native QMS. It enables quality control teams to more easily and accurately check for product defects, ensuring conformity to specifications and adherence to quality criteria.

Inspection Management helps identify issues sooner and resolve them faster by automating links to quality events, nonconformance reporting, and corrective actions. It also provides a central repository for shop-floor data for analysis and continuous improvement throughout the manufacturing process. Leveraging Inspection Management, quality professionals and operations managers can eliminate paperwork, consistently and prescriptively conduct quality inspections, and maintain revision control of inspection plans.

Other key benefits:
• Always-current prescriptive inspection guidance reduces disposition time and gives quality teams access to current and consistent guidance on inspection processes to ensure conformity to specifications and adherence to quality criteria.
• Automatic linking to quality events enables centralized tracking of events and linking to downstream processes to create collaborative digital workflows between stakeholders to enable quality improvement and accountability in the value chain—from new product introductions to supply chain quality, document control, and training.
• Flexible and configurable inspection plan framework supports many types of inspections and operational checklists, such as in-process, finished goods, container loading, customer returns, or final production.
• Inspections data reporting and analytics allow manufacturers to capture and incorporate quality control data to track, trend, and prioritize the most pressing quality issues.

Click here to download a copy of ETQ’s recent industry report, “The Pulse of Quality in Manufacturing 2024.”