Quality Control Process Model

Excel Quality Control Model for Door Manufacturer

Jeld-Wen produce a wide range of high quality timber doors and in order to ensure the quality of their doors they asked Xlteqs Excel experts to produce a way of recording defects on their doors as part of their quality control process. Having already produced an initial brief of their requirements, a meeting was held to expand on this and confirm their full requirements. After an in-depth discussion, it was agreed that an Microsoft Excel workbook would meet their requirements for the following reasons:

  • It allows the development of a simple tool which could easily be updated when needed without the need to rely on external support
  • It provides a familiar interface via the Office 365 application to allow an easy transition into using the tool
  • The development time is quick and therefore inexpensive compared to other methods of building an application similar to this.

As the workbook is intended to be used on a tablet device, a major consideration had to be given to how the user would interact with the program. A tablet is normally interacted with by using a touch screen and not a keyboard, therefore a very simple interface, mainly consisting of buttons, was decided upon.

In order to allow the user to enter any defects found on the doors, the user is presented with a simple list which allows the user to select the “Door Type”. The design and functionality of the list was custom built to allow multiple font sizes and colours on each row, something the standard Excel listbox does not allow.

Selecting any option from the list automatically records the selected item and then presents the user with the defect type.

Again this had tiThis is a bespoke process and not standard excel functionality.

Selecting the defect type works in the same way as selecting a door type and moves the user onto the final selection. Jen-Weld required the ability to record where any defects occurred, so another bespoke control had to be built. This one allows the user to select on a picture where the defect has been found.

Finally the user can save the defect with the whole process being able to be completed in under 5 seconds. The user can also return to any part of the process to change any entry by selecting the data which was previously entered and reselecting the correct entry.

All lists presented to the user can be updated very easily by adjusting a list stored on a separate excel worksheet. This keeps with the core principle of the tool as being simple to use and maintain, helping to reduce the need for any additional development work.

Reporting

Entering data is a meaningless task unless there is a way to report on the entered data and Jeld-Wen required an easy-to-use reporting dashboard to display the results. Having built many dashboards previously, Xlteq was able to deliver a simple but comprehensive single dashboard which gave the user a lot of flexibility on what the user could report on.

One of the key functionalities which was built was the ability to change the displayed resolution and scale. This allows the resulting output to be displayed in a more granular or course view as required.

A table of statistics provides a brief overview of the data.

A set of simple charts was also created which gives the user a view of where the defects are occurring and providing guidance on where corrective action can be taken.

Finally we provided the ability to filter by specific data types, giving the user control over what data is presented to them, using excels built in list ability.

Contact us to find out more about our Excel and Access Database development and support. 


Contact