IQC testing of raw materials is the first checkpoint for the quality control of enterprise products before production. Putting nonconforming products into the manufacturing process will lead to nonconformities in the process or the final products and result in huge losses. IQC impacts not only the quality of the company's final products but also various kinds of direct or indirect costs. In the manufacturing industry, there are usually four major items that have a direct impact on product quality —— design, incoming materials, manufacturing process, and storage and transportation. And generally speaking, design accounts for 25%, incoming materials 50%, manufacturing process 20%, and storage and transportation 1% to 5%. Above all, the incoming inspection plays an overwhelming role in the quality control of the company's products, so IQC shall be raised to a strategic level.
IQC (Incoming Quality Control) is the quality inspection of incoming materials. IQC refers to the quality confirmation and verification of purchased raw materials, components, or products. IQC is the quality inspection process done by sampling the raw materials sent by suppliers.
The output of an IQC process will be the acceptance or return of products.
IQC is the first checkpoint to control the quality of products before production. Its purpose is to start the QC process from the beginning of the production process. find the quality problems at the very beginning, reduce the quality cost and realize quality control effectively. Putting nonconforming products into the manufacturing process will lead to nonconformities in the manufacturing process or final products and result in huge losses. IQC impacts not only the quality of the company's final products but also various kinds of direct or indirect costs, delivery time, and reputation.
In the manufacturing industry, design, incoming materials, manufacturing processes, storage, and transportation usually have a direct impact on product quality. And generally speaking, design accounts for 25%, incoming materials 50%, manufacturing process 25%, and storage and transportation 1% to 5%. To summarize, the incoming inspection plays an overwhelming role in the quality control of the company's products, so IQC shall be raised to a strategic level;
The person in charge of the whole IQC and Quality Control process is the IQC inspector. An IQC inspector has some key roles as stated below:
Incoming inspection: the main task of an IQC inspector is to inspect the incoming materials. It can be briefly described as :
A part of IQC that aims to confirm the main or all features of the outsourced or purchased materials are up to the relevant standards. This is done to identify whether the materials meet the requirements for applications.
Handling quality problems of incoming materials: A part of the IQC procedure is also to track and deal with the quality issues found during the inspection, as well as the major material quality issues reported by production and market, and establish preventive measures within IQC.
Some large companies with a clear division of labor will set up the post of SQE (Supplier Quality Engineering) engineer to deal with supplier quality problems. This responsibility is taken by the QC team leader in NexPCB, together with the quality supervisor to improve the quality of our suppliers. In NexPCB, the process includes summarizing incoming inspection results with other inspection reports, generating monthly, and annual reports, etc.
This being said, the IQC process is not only a window for the company to deal with suppliers but also a gateway to control product quality. The performance of IQC is directly related to the company's product quality cost and the company's impression among suppliers. QC staff are required to be able to do strict sampling, "objective and fair" judgment, respect for suppliers, reduce acceptance by concession, etc.
The following is the incoming inspection process set by NexPCB, which starts right away upon the materials' arrival at the warehouse.
Generally, IQC inspection mainly focuses on sampling inspection. Despite this, the amount of products to be inspected is still sometimes too much to be covered by the IQC team alone. A lot of the IQC process also relies on manual inspection and judgment, which tends to be more subjective. Therefore, IQC cannot eliminate all risks.
How to reduce the risk of incoming inspection:
IQC incoming inspection is a kind of passive management. To improve the quality of incoming materials, we shall transform the passive inspection into active control, bring quality control forward, find the quality problems in the forefront, reduce the quality cost, achieve effective control, and assist suppliers to improve the quality control level internally.