At Nations Photo Lab, our teams live and breathe quality. Because of this, we regularly review our processes and production techniques to make sure we are giving you our absolute best each and every time. We noticed a pain point in our production, and that was in how many products were needing to be remade.
We stand by our Picture Perfect Guarantee that says if you are not happy with your product, we will make it right, but we also wanted to improve on that process and minimize the potential for those remakes.
This summer, the Nations Photo Lab Quality Team took time to walk our Production Teams (from Prints to Frames to Photo Books) through their production lines to discuss how their manufacturing processes contribute to the final product.
Our Quality and the Production teams reviewed the products that didn't pass our final quality inspection, and were not shipped to customers, from all across the production floor and reviewed the feedback from customers that received our product.
“Voice of the Customer” is a phrase used in manufacturing to mean we want to hear your feedback about your products, so we can continue to improve and impress. We want our in-house team to feel empowered to take initiatives and make these improvements knowing that they have the tools and concepts to deliver top quality at each step of the creation process.
As a result of working together, we created a robust list of action items to decrease the amount of remakes while keeping our quality as high as ever. First and foremost, we improved our continued open communication between all production departments. And to help at each point of production, we created custom visual aids for our staff to measure our product defects.
You may actually see those visual aids in your next order! Orders are now accompanied by an insert with QR codes identifying the products in your order. Production associates can scan these QR codes along each step of the production line to make sure all items are in the order. This also is a paperless production system, therefore we are reducing the impact on the environment of not using a paper job ticket to initiate the manufacturing process. During the holiday season there are over 150,000 orders, so this is going to prevent a lot of paper waste!
In regards to quality checks, production associates have specific quality control screens to check the item being made. This allows them to view the top issues that have been reported by customers for these products, including issues with trimming, scratches, and other physical product issues. That way associates know the key items to check for before shipment, with actual images of the expected end product on the screen to reference.
Nations Photo Lab takes pride in the material we use to build our products and in many cases we are more discerning than what is considered "industry standard," and therefore, passable.
Why? Because we know high quality is why you come to Nations Photo Lab, and this is why we have our Picture Perfect Guarantee.
Thinking as a team provides us great insight, to where we can continuously Improve. We aim to exceed your expectations every time, and guarantee your treasured memories are in good hands.
