Design Quality Control overview
Quality design is necessary for any industry.
There are many processes that go into producing any piece of design, whether it is for an item that goes into a factory or for a home that a family installs in their own backyard.
In the last few years, the use of CAD software has become common in all industries, and as such many companies are turning to qualified and trained quality design professionals to ensure their design quality control.
In the past, a company may take on the full design process themselves without needing outside help, but this is becoming more difficult to do as time goes on.
Companies are spending more money on computers and other technology as well as hiring more personnel to handle the design quality control part of their business.
This means that companies are taking on more quality design leads and have more to deal with.
This does not mean they can’t make mistakes, or that their employees are incompetent. With more design leads to deal with, and less time to work on each design project, mistakes can occur.
This means that businesses are taking on more work than they can efficiently handle, and they have to rely on a dedicated team of QA professionals to catch errors before a customer is negatively affected by them.
One of the first steps to taking advantage of quality design checklist outsourcing is to understand what a checklist is and how it works. A design checklist is a document that contains all the information that a designer needs to know to create quality work.
It tracks requirements, produces a design schedule, assigns individual task responsibilities, assigns task responsibilities between team members, and keeps all documents in a standard format. Having an entire bookmarked checklist on a computer helps the QA team stay organized and efficient.
In a nutshell, the QC process means quality is ensured at every step of the design process.
The design standards are designed to be simple and easy to follow so that even inexperienced or unprofessional QA professionals can use the system effectively.
The Quality design standards also dictate that changes need to be made to ensure compliance with the design standards, and what information each change requires to include.
Once the design standards have been defined, the teams involved in the design process are then required to abide by the specific standards. Once these requirements have been fulfilled, the system automatically creates a design schedule based upon each team’s progress.
This schedule contains all of the materials, tools, and time allotted for each activity. If any activity goes outside of the scheduled time frame, it is documented in the log files as well.
Because the entire process is tracked in a log, all changes can be logged as they happen.
Teams are automatically notified as to what actions need to be taken to meet the requirements defined in the checklist. This type of system has many benefits for a QA department.
Firstly, it makes the entire process easier for QA professionals who must adhere to a strict set of guidelines. Secondly, it provides QA professionals with an easy way to keep track of their own progress and allows them to refer back to the checklist to make sure the work is still up to the highest level possible.
Using a CAD program such as AutoCAD, designers can create a design package, specify specifications, and generate wiring diagrams, draft a protocol, and so forth. From there, a QA team can review the design files, approve the protocol, and determine whether or not the project needs to be continued. If continued, the team would then develop and manufacture the necessary materials and tools to complete the task.
Wireline diagrams allow for the creation of detailed design packages. However, they are more difficult to edit since they are typically cut in half. A software product that allows editing CAD schematics is needed. Luckily, there is one just such product available – AutoCAD Wiring Diagrams.
