Dynamics 365 Quality Management

Are you feeling a tiny bit like Mick Jagger? Not the desire to strut around like a peacock, more like you just cannot get satisfaction, satisfaction from your quality control process! You’ve tried, oh you’ve tried… well D365 is equipped with the structure to handle Quality management at many levels. Whether it is for inbound raw goods, in-production, or final inspection, Dynamics can step up and satisfy better than a Snickers. Although, in a taste test 10 out of 10 people overwhelmingly prefer the Snickers.

There are a few facets to a good Quality Management program. This blog will cover the basics of quality testing, non-conformance checks, and corrections. For the purposes of our demo, we will assume we are making vinyl records. Rock on!

Quality Management Testing in D365

Quality testing is the most intricate to setup. To start, we just need to make sure that the Quality management is enabled. Start in Modules > Inventory management > Setup > Inventory and warehouse management parameters> Quality management tab. From here, set the Use quality management option to ‘Yes’. This is also the are to review report setup.

Most of the rest of the setup will occur in Inventory management. This will include: Test instruments, Tests, Test variables, Item sampling, Quality group, Test groups, Quality associations.

Test instruments are any pieces of equipment used during the testing process. They are created in Inventory management > Setup > Quality control > Test instruments and used in the Tests that will be set-up next. For our purposes we might set-up equipment like, a Densitometer to test incoming raw product, a scale to weigh finished goods (180 gram albums), a stereo system to play the record.

The Tests that are set-up will support the test groups and if necessary, will include some of the instruments created above.  In Inventory management > Setup > Quality control > Tests you can create as many tests as needed. In our example, we have created a test to check the density of the incoming raw goods (Vinyl pellets), weigh the album, and play the album.

To quantify test results, we need to add Test variables. Go to Inventory management > Setup > Quality control > Test variables. Here, we can add variables such as Pass/Fail, Density value (Too dense, less dense), Sound quality. These will be used later when Test groups are set-up.

Time to Sample in D365 Quality Management

The next prerequisite we need to decide on is Item sampling. This defines the sample size for inspection and is used in Test groups. Starting in Inventory management > Setup > Quality control > Item sampling, we can add as many iterations as we need. Perhaps we want to sample a certain percentage of incoming raw goods or a certain number of finished products. This also allows us some ability to control the process with some parameters. For example, Full blocking will stop all quantity of a reference line while the quality inspection is in progress.

The next step is to create a quality group. This will define what items are being tested. In Inventory management > Setup > Quality control > Quality groups we can add groups and associated products/items. This will be used later when setting up automated quality orders.

It is time to create a test group. Go to Inventory management > Setup > Quality control > Test groups. This will create the process for what happens during the item inspection. In the example below, we set-up a test group to check the finished goods. There are two tests required in this test group and each test has its own test values.

Finally, we can create some Quality orders. Quality orders can be created automatically at various stages or ad hoc as needed. To setup the automated actions go to Inventory management > Setup > Quality control > Quality associations. It is here where the user can decide on Inventory, production, or sales quality checks, among others. Our example showing a production reference type using the Quality group Album and Test group Test album created previously. Note that we can stop the reference line from certain actions depending on the reference type. In this case, we can stop Reported as finished or End until the quality order is processed.

To create single Quality orders, go to Inventory management > Periodic tasks> Quality management> Quality orders. Once a Quality order is in place, the user will log the results for each required test, validate the order, and decide if a nonconformance is needed.

The nonconformance is a middle ground for someone to check the results of the quality order and confirm whether a correction is in order. The user can Approve or Reject the non-conformance. If approved, a Correction can be scheduled to potentially correct the quality issue.

Both the Nonconformance and the Corrections can be found under Inventory management > Periodic tasks> Quality management.

Dynamics 365 has all of the tools to help with basic to complex Quality management plans. With the basics in this blog, an organiztion should be able to start the process of creating a solid quality process and perhaps even do a little struting like Mick.

Please check out our related blogs:

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations Non-Conformance Reporting | Ellipse Solutions

Non-Conformance Reporting in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 (ellipsesolutions.com)