Reports of quality incidents are plaguing the airline industry as news of incidents and concerns over safety are making headlines every week. Despite stringent federal regulations and accelerated technological advancements, the industry has come under fire recently and the problems only continue to grow.
Why are we hearing about increased safety incidents in the airline industry? Part of the problem is that manufacturing demand has accelerated while worker shortages have increased. Other contributing factors include the growing complexity of the supply chain, with suppliers distributed all around the world and the demand of manufacturers to adhere to different regional compliance regulations. And bad news travels fast these days, thanks to the instant visibility of any issue as it is amplified by social and electronic media.
While the airline industry and aviation officials continue to reiterate the overwhelming safety of flying today, incidents have left the airline industry scrambling to review quality processes and quell safety concerns. ETQ CTO John Taylor recently addressed this issue in a Forbes Technology Council column in which he outlined a series of proactive steps aircraft manufacturers and suppliers can take to improve processes and elevate regulatory and consumer confidence.
Overall, ensuring the highest levels of quality despite changing market dynamics requires continually and critically reviewing processes to identify those that are ineffective or missing, establishing new ones, and creating an enterprise-wide quality mindset. Keys steps in that process include:
- Conduct process audits. Carefully review the processes and effectiveness of essential processes to gauge optimal effectiveness and initiate new ways of identifying opportunities to increase compliance with, and effectiveness of, newly established processes.
- Conduct software audits. Take full advantage of your enterprise systems, including warehouse management systems (WMS), quality management systems (QMS) and enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), and how they can be integrated to optimize enterprise-wide visibility.
- Enforce supplier management. Establish strict criteria for selecting and managing suppliers, conduct regular audits to ensure that all components and materials meet quality and safety standards, and automate supply chain management through the QMS, enabling all stakeholders to track suppliers and materials, and trigger alerts and actions about supplier quality and safety issues.
- Boost training and certification programs. Provide comprehensive training programs for employees involved in manufacturing, assembly and inspection processes, and ensure that workers are certified and up to date with the latest industry standards and best practices.
- Conduct risk management. Conduct thorough risk assessments at every stage of the manufacturing process, or hire an independent consultant, to identify potential hazards and implement preventive measures to mitigate risks.
- Leverage data analytics and predictive maintenance. Utilize analytics to review enterprise-wide data to identify any trends or anomalies in advance of issues.
- Collaborate with regulatory authorities. Ensure regulatory compliance and heightened visibility into operations, conduct root cause analysis of any issues and more easily manage documentation processes.
- Empower plant floor workers. Provide plant floor workers with the training and technology they need to be informed and empowered to manage and report any quality issues.
- Employ AI. Machine learning, generative AI and other forms of AI can be used to boost quality and assist employees in making decisions.
- Foster a culture of continuous improvement. Every quality event or Corrective and Preventive Action (CAPA) that results can be an opportunity for improvement.
By implementing these strategies, aviation manufacturers can improve the quality and safety of their products, as well as elevate confidence in the overall airline industry. To learn more about how ETQ Reliance® helps aviation manufacturers achieve that, look here.
