As a quality manager in manufacturing, you are tasked with ensuring that the quality assurance measures are properly documented and tracked. One of the most important elements of this job is making sure that all part approval documents, and product certificates related to the manufacturing process are up to date and accurate. Unfortunately, this is not always an easy task, and there are several challenges related to document management that quality managers must face.
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Here are five common challenges related to certificate administration that are important for you as Quality Manager to take control of:

#1 Ensuring authenticity  

One of the key challenges of certificate management is verifying the authenticity of the certificates themselves. There is a risk of fraudulent certificates being created, so it is important to have robust processes in place to authenticate certificates and ensure they are legitimate.

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#2 Managing data accuracy  

Another challenge is ensuring that the data on the certificate is accurate and up-to-date. This can be a challenge when dealing with multiple suppliers and manufacturers, as it can be difficult to keep track of all the data formats and templates and ensure that it is accurate. Here it can become important and relevant to collaborate with Sourcing to streamline the incoming formats from suppliers.

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#3 Ensuring compliance  

International standards specify the requirements for product and material certificates, and it can be a challenge to ensure that all suppliers and manufacturers meet these requirements. This requires close collaboration and transparency between suppliers, manufacturers, and quality control teams to ensure that all inspections are conducted to the required standard.

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#4 Maintaining traceability

Another challenge is maintaining traceability of the product from the raw material stage along the value chain to the final product. This is generally a manual routine that can be rather time consuming, and potentially become a costly process to track defect parts that are needed to be contained. This requires careful tracking and documentation of the product's journey through the supply chain, including any inspections or testing that takes place along the way.

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#5 Managing documentation  

Managing a large volume of documentation associated with product certificate management can be a challenge. This includes certificates, test reports, inspection reports, part approvals and other documentation that needs to be stored, managed, and tracked over time. Having a digital platform for managing this documentation can help to streamline the process and reduce the risk of errors or omissions.

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The importance of stay on top, and improve

Overall, certificate management can be a difficult job for Quality Managers. There are a variety of common challenges related to certificate handling that quality managers must face in order to ensure that the products they are producing meet the highest quality standards. Quality managers must stay on top of changing regulations, properly store certificates, make sure all certificates are properly completed, track certificates, and verify certificates to do their job effectively.

Although a lot of organizations are transforming with help of new digital processes, many Quality Departments and Managers are still dependent on manual procedures. How do you secure an efficient and safe certification administration? Listen in and learn more in our webinar ”The role of digitalization in Quality Management”

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