A good quality management system (QMS) is essential for any manufacturer aiming to deliver high-quality products consistently and be in compliance with industry, state and federal regulations. Traditionally, it involves manual workflows executed within siloed systems that can’t communicate with each other. The risk of noncompliance in this scenario, along with a loss of productivity, can impact profitability and customer satisfaction. That’s where a document management system (DMS) comes in to work hand in hand with your QMS.
Today’s manufacturers are expected to be familiar with all new technology that promises to make their businesses more efficient. In the past, manufacturing companies put the focus of technology investments on improving production processes. Now, getting control of documents and data is just as important, especially when quality management is involved.
This article will cover the aspects of quality management that can be most improved by digitizing documents and automating workflows. It will also explain the benefits of digitalizing quality management processes with a document management system (DMS).
Table of Contents
- Introduction to quality management in manufacturing
- Key trends shaping quality management in manufacturing
- Leveraging technology for quality improvement
- Best practices for effective quality management
- Avoid common pitfalls in quality management
- Case studies: Real-world examples
- Conclusion: Shift quality management into high gear
Introduction to quality management in manufacturing
Importance of quality management in manufacturing
A Quality Management System (QMS) is a blueprint that enables manufacturers to meet customer demand, improve vendor relationships and comply with regulatory requirements connected to the production, sale and distribution of their products. It includes processes, policies, and procedures that guide employees and managers in their effort to maintain a high level of excellence.
In manufacturing, one small misstep early in the process can lead to significant issues later. To prevent this, manufacturers rely on their QMS to standardize and administer quality management processes.
For example, substandard manufacturing operations can result in entire batches of products that are unfit for use. Inconsistent processes can leave your company at risk of fines when an audit occurs. Disputes with suppliers can halt production or distribution and affect sales. With a QMS, every step is monitored for efficiency and accuracy to reduce errors and downtime and increase trust among customers and suppliers.
Robust processes are the backbone of quality. Process improvement methodologies, such as Lean or Six Sigma, eliminate waste, reduce defects and enhance efficiency. By continuously refining processes, organizations can enhance the quality of their products and services while optimizing resource utilization.
Digitalizing quality management documentation and other information introduces an elevated level of control, automation, tracking, and analysis that aligns with industry standards, without adding headcount or overhead.
Overview of current challenges and opportunities
According to Rockwell Automation’s 9th Annual State of Smart Manufacturing Report, which is based on a survey of more than 1,500 manufacturers from 17 countries, the top internal barriers manufacturers come up against are:
- Attracting employees with required skills
- Deploying and integrating new technology
- Budget constraints
- Balancing quality and growth
- Capturing and analyzing data to improve performance
Smart manufacturing practices are coming into play to address many of these issues and fuel digital transformation. These practices involve the integration of innovative, new technologies to optimize and streamline traditional manufacturing operations. It’s a comprehensive strategy that incorporates artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and cloud solutions. Smart manufacturing can also provide a sustainable competitive advantage.
Key trends shaping quality management in manufacturing
Welcome to industry 4.0
Industry 4.0, also known as the fourth industrial revolution, is bringing about a significant shift in manufacturing processes driven by advancements in digital technology that include:
- Cloud computing
- The industrial internet of things (IIoT)
- Machine-to-machine communication
- Workflow automation
- Artificial intelligence (AI)
- Advanced analytics
- Robotics
- Big data analytics
These technologies enable computers, systems and humans to communicate in real time, improving productivity and quality and customization in manufacturing processes.
Digitalization and automation in quality management
According to Deloitte’s 2025 Manufacturing Industry Outlook, manufacturers have continued investing in digital technologies despite economic uncertainty, rising costs, and a challenging business climate. For example, Deloitte’s Digital Maturity Index 2023 survey found that 98% of 800 surveyed manufacturers in four major global economic regions have started their digital transformation journey, compared with 78% in 2019.
The article notes that in response to rising material and labor costs, an ongoing skills gap, and potential disruptions from geopolitical factors, investments in digital technologies across manufacturing organizations will continue to grow in 2025.
Risk-based thinking ensures positive outcomes
Risk-based thinking (RBT) is a proactive approach that requires companies to evaluate risk as part of their quality management initiative. RBT involves identifying, evaluating, and minimizing risks in all phases of the manufacturing process, from development to production, order fulfillment and shipping. This ensures that risks are addressed before they can affect product quality or compliance.
Once potential risks are identified and prioritized, tactics for avoiding or minimizing them are developed and executed. These strategies may include revamping processes, tightening document control and offering additional employee training. RBT requires an ongoing commitment. Regular monitoring can track the success of your efforts and flag new risks as they come up.
Leveraging technology for quality improvement
Role of document management systems in quality management
While the QMS is your overall framework, a DMS supports its implementation by taking manual document management off your hands. A DMS aids in managing document control, training, audits, and corrective and preventive actions. It also provides real time data to improve decision-making, proof of document integrity and easy access to documents required for audits and secure storage.
A centralized repository makes quality information available to authorized users across departments. This instant access links information with the people who need it to enable a proactive approach to setbacks and an openness to new possibilities.
Without digitalization, quality management data may be entered into an internally created database or typed into a spreadsheet confining information to separate silos. This increases the effort required to manage documents, data and workflows. These systems can’t produce reports that track whether the new processes resulted in effective quality management activities or accurately determine the QMS's overall status.
Replace slow manual processes with modern workflow automation
Employees bogged down by repetitive, time-consuming processes with disjointed and incomplete information work hard but cannot deliver the results, you know they are capable of. It's time to provide your team with the right tools to meet their goals.
Automated workflows enable you to define process steps according to your business rules then connect them with actions. These digital processes are predictable and consistent. Any deviations are clearly specified and resulting exceptions are flagged and sent to the designated staff member for further review.
In addition, audit trails which decisions were made by which users, enabling you to monitor the process and address bottlenecks and human errors. Invoice processing, employee onboarding, and vendor management, all of which have numerous steps and decision points, are ideal as a starting point for your initial digitization efforts.
A DMS organizes documents and data, syncs data with your other business software and enforces retention schedules. A document management system enables integration with other systems to provide direct access to related documents such as quality specifications, material certifications, or schematic drawings to engineering software, your enterprise resource management system (ERP), project management applications and other business software.
Here are three examples of how creating digital documentation changes the game:
Compliance: US law requires that employees have access to a Materials Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) to record potentially hazardous substances at their workplace. A manufacturer that produces many chemicals needs to maintain and update hundreds of MSDS records. Imagine making those updates in a paperless world by having all of your MSDS data available on a laptop or tablet next to equipment where hazardous substances are used. Whenever compliance regulations require you to update an MSDS and distribute the information, you’ll do so quickly, accurately and without the cost of paper and printing.
Quality control documents: Without automation, quality control may involve a supervisor walking around the shop floor doing spot checks and filling out paper forms. This can lead to errors, delays in information flow and communication problems. With a paper process, information isn’t disseminated effectively. Frequently, documentation is stored in a filing cabinet, making it hard for the team to analyze and extract metrics. When you digitize quality control forms, the right people gain instant access, providing faster insight into trends, metrics and other information. Replacing the pencil and clipboard with a tablet and stylus is one of the first steps toward digitalizing your quality control process.
Product documentation: Manufacturers regularly use documentation such as a bill of materials that account for all the raw materials needed to manufacture a product. Depending on the complexity of the finished product, these bills of material can be lengthy, and several versions may need to travel with a product as it moves through assembly. Benefits of cloud solutions for scalability
Cloud solutions elevate scalability to the next level. Your company gets what you need effortlessly, ensuring readiness for future growth. Your business can easily expand capabilities when your needs change. Storage volume and user licenses can be effortlessly scaled up when you onboard new employees or need more storage capacity. The key to this flexibility and scalability is a system architecture that handles document access and user activities via web services.
Web services enable sharing data between business software seamlessly. Using web services, software can handle an increasing number of users and documents without affecting operations. This is because web services distribute the load across multiple servers and manage resources efficiently. New functionality can be added without disrupting existing workflows, making it easier to scale the solution.
Cloud services also free your IT department from the responsibility of managing system upgrades, applying security patches and dealing with new cybersecurity concerns — so they are ready to focus on strategic projects. Cloud software providers leverage economies of scale to provide security beyond anything most businesses could do in-house.
Mobile access and remote work capabilities
Cloud solutions are about total availability and anytime and anywhere – devices, operating systems and physical location are irrelevant to staff getting work done. Key tasks like capturing, routing and approving documents should all be available through a mobile app.
With a mobile app, you should be able to access all documents, stay involved in workflows, and store documents directly from a tablet or smartphone. A mobile app should mirror the look and feel of the software on a laptop or desktop and its use should not require additional training.
Best practices for effective quality management
Establish clear quality standards and specifications
First define your company’s goals for providing consistent and superior product quality and top-notch customer service. You need predetermined objectives that employees, managers and the executive team are accountable for satisfying.
Here are examples of objectives to consider:
- Reducing defects
- Increasing efficiency of slower or resource intensive processes
- Improving customer service
- Proactively identifying and addressing potential risks
- Better management of vendor relationships
- Higher rate of employee engagement
Implementing continuous improvement processes
Building a company culture that encourages continuous improvement is based on valuing and rewarding your employees’ contributions, ideas, and skills. This increases employee empowerment and enables them to be key contributors to innovation that underlies a company’s success. It also involves pinpointing processes that can be optimized, determining the action to take, and monitoring the results to facilitate sustainable growth.
Traceability and compliance with regulatory standards
Traceability in manufacturing involves the capability to track and monitor the movement of raw materials, components, and finished products throughout the supply chain, production and delivery. This process ensures that every stage of manufacturing is documented, from sourcing raw materials to delivering products to customers.
It enables manufacturers to identify the source of materials, oversee production efficiency, and quickly resolve quality issues. Furthermore, traceability systems offer detailed documentation that assists businesses in complying with industry regulations and international standards, such as ISO 9001.
Traceability systems use technology like RFID tags, barcode scanning, and data analytics to keep tabs on the progress of production, inventory management and supply chains. This simplifies compliance and helps to maintain exceptional product quality.
Training and empowering employees
In the modern workplace, upskilling and reskilling frontline workers is a crucial part of getting the most out of new technology. Upskilling provides training and development programs to update an employees' current skills and address knowledge gaps. The focus is on enhancing their skill set so they can advance in their positions and be prepared to take on new roles within the company.
Reskilling equips employees with new skills to enhance their effectiveness in their current jobs or to prepare them for higher-level positions. Often reskilling does not require moving an employee to a different job. It usually means adding new skills to their repertoire to boost their performance in their current role and can also advance their career.
Ensure that your employees are trained in applicable requirements and understand the benefits of meeting and exceeding these requirements, which include delivering high quality products and services to your customer.
Avoid common pitfalls in quality management
Addressing nonconformance and corrective action
When products or processes fail to meet specified standards, it is essential to keep a record of this information and evaluate their significance and determine the appropriate corrective action. In a manual QMS, this involves creating a paper document for each product nonconformance, process deviation, or product complaint, and routing them to the right employee for data entry.
Then the information is sent for review. Following the review, necessary actions must be identified and implemented to resolve the issue. With digitalization, these error reports and customer communications are recorded on electronic forms and automatically archived and then routed for review.
Create a comprehensive audit trail
Audits ensure regulatory compliance. It can be a scramble to ensure all documentation filed accurately and easily retrievable to demonstrate a clear audit trail. An audit trail records all interactions with a document including access, change histories and approvals are stored along with it. This drastically reduces manual work during the audit process and provides peace of mind because you know documentation is complete and accurate.
With a DMS, documents are easily retrieved and organized for compliance checks. Plus, all interactions with the document including access, change histories and approvals are stored along with it. This drastically reduces manual work during the audit process and provides peace of mind because you know your documentation is in order.
Supplier quality management and accountability
Your team can use automated processes to track your suppliers’ performance. You should have a mechanism to review orders and vendor-specific non-conformances, manage quality deviations, and set up automated alerts to notify your suppliers when new specifications are introduced, or current ones are updated. Benchmarks to check include defect rates, cycle times and inspection results.
Case studies: Real-world examples
Fencing manufacturer increases productivity with mobile document management software
The company rolled DocuWare out to its three locations. The rollout began in their accounting department, where electronic invoice approval was introduced. Then project documentation was digitized. In the final stage, the DocuWare provided mobile access to field superintendents.
The company’s fences are installed over 2-3 days and installations are often performed by sub-contractors. It is crucial for Century Fence superintendents to be onsite and have quick access to project files. The superintends and office staff refer to these files often during the quoting, staging, installation and billing phases of a project. With DocuWare, every member of the team can easily access and annotate these documents, whether they are in the office or at a customer site.
Salco Products streamlines workflows and automates retention schedule enforcement
Salco Products makes embedded hatch covers for railway hopper cars, a specialty product ventilates cargo while it’s in transport as well as other products for the railroad industry. The company works closely with the Federal Railroad Administration and has to be able to provide the requested documentation quickly in case of an audit. Before installing DocuWare, the company stored its documents on a local network, but that was not ideal. For example, sometimes a staff member would store information, and when they went back to edit it, they might find their folder had been inadvertently deleted.
Now, there are more than 100 DocuWare users at Salco Products. The company uses about 40 different workflows in their day-to-day business. For example, a nonconformance workflow is triggered when a customer files a complaint. When their customer support team enters the complaint into the system, DocuWare kicks off a workflow for the complaint review, which then progresses through the designated steps.
Another important workflow is activated when a technical drawing or a procedure needs to be updated. These requests are submitted through an electronic form. The forms start a workflow that requires input or approvals from multiple people. In addition, documents are archived with an index field that identifies their retention period and are automatically deleted once that date is reached.
Conclusion: Shift quality management into high gear
Taking your quality management efforts to the next level with a DMS like DocuWare unlocks new levels of efficiency, compliance and growth. With features like workflow automation, centralized document storage, enhanced security and compliance-ready audit trails, a DMS increases consistency, reduces errorsand streamlines your processes.
DocuWare’s comprehensive solution is a user-friendly platform with all of these features and more. Use built-in traceability and reporting to stay audit-ready and compliant. Whether you’re a small enterprise or a large corporation, DocuWare empowers your team to focus on quality and innovation rather than being bogged down by manual tasks.
