SAP Quality Management (QM) is a component of SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) that helps businesses implement and run quality control processes. It is designed to prevent defects, enable continuous process improvement, and establish sustained quality control programs. Potential benefits for the organization include compliance with manufacturing quality regulations, lower operating costs, and improving customer satisfaction.
SAP QM integrates with other ECC components like Materials Management, Plant Maintenance, Production Planning, Sales and Distribution, Finance, Controlling and Human Resources. This integration means that SAP QM tasks can be incorporated into tasks within these other ECC components.
Key SAP Quality Management activities
SAP QM is used primarily in Quality control processes that organizations use on goods as they move through the product lifecycle, including inspecting goods as they come into a facility, when they go through production and when they are shipped out as finished goods.
SAP QM consists of tools for several interrelated activities that can be configured for organization's specific processes. Each of these tools consists of functions that are specific to that activity. These tools include:
- Quality Planning (QM-PT), which lets you set up and manage quality inspection plans that define what goods are inspected, how the inspections take place, the characteristics of the goods to be inspected and the type of equipment used to perform the inspections.
- Quality Inspection (QM-IM), which allows you to determine if a product meets the defined quality requirements and to record the results of inspections. QM-IM uses inspection specifications that are defined in Quality Planning.
- Quality Certificates (QM-CA), which allows you to certify that goods have met defined quality requirements. Customers may have different specific criteria for the quality of their goods and you can confirm Quality Certificates to take this into account. However, QM-CA can also generate general certificates that don't use such specific criteria.
- Quality Notifications (QM-QN), which lets you record problems you encounter with goods received from a vendor, when the goods are in production, or that are reported by customers. QM-QN can be configured to record, process, and manage positive information about products as well as complaints about quality.
- Quality Control (QM-QC-AQC), which allows you to manage the quality control process. For example, you can use inspection results to update quality levels; use control charts to control characteristic values; and update vendor validations for the procurement process.
- Test Equipment Management (QM-IT), which allows you to manage information about the test equipment used in quality inspections. You can maintain data for each piece of test equipment and make sure it is calibrated regularly.