Whether your company has to comply with ISO, APQP, Six Sigma or any of a myriad of other quality control doctrines, your goal is to build quality into your processes – not build a new set of processes on top of your old ones. A strong Quality Control management tool can help companies track their quality processes and create an automatic audit trail. You can gain confidence that your processes are being followed, and that your team isn’t encumbered by a new level of bureaucracy. Collaboration Suite is a hosted, intuitive solution that lets various members of your quality team participate in the product design and manufacturing process without having to invest in costly tools or training.
Some of the business applications for Quality Control management include;
Quality Process Templates — Repeatability is key to quality management. You want to design the processes once and have the tracking of the tasks and documentation happen automatically. Quality management tools should allow you to create a workflow and project template to match your internal processes, and then create the audit trail for future reference. Once you have refined your processes, you need a flexible and intuitive tool that users will adopt so that future programs follow the proper procedures. Quality management solutions allow you to manage a complex matrix of documents, processes and tasks across a geographically and functionally dispersed design and manufacturing team, even when manufacturing or design are outsourced. Quality Management solutions orchestrate, track and make these processes more collaborative in order to maintain margins, reduce costs, increase quality, and deliver products to the market on spec and on time.
Cross Functional team involvement — Most quality processes have a financial sign-off somewhere before the program gets a green light. Even before the finance involvement, there are representatives from design engineering, value engineering, manufacturing and quality assurance. Managing cross functional teams, often in different locations, can be difficult if not impossible. A strong Quality Management tool will make this easier by tracking all activities, documents and decisions online and automatically as the process steps are completed.
Collaboration Suite Quality Management
Collaboration Suite Solutions, which augment and extend existing CAD, PDM, ERP and other information systems, include:
Collaboration Suite Project Navigator™
Create on-line collaborative project spaces that serve as central hubs for orchestrating Quality Management for product introductions and manufacturing. Hierarchical task management is provided, which encompasses participants, roles, permissions and data. All Collaboration Suite collaborative functionality is available with the ability to link any Collaboration Suite process solution directly to tasks and relevant data. Status rollup and tracking with Gantt chart display is provided within, and across, projects and subprojects.
Collaboration Suite Quick Collaboration™
Quickly create on-line collaborations where members of the extended product team can access, understand, collaborate on and resolve quality issues. A secure central repository provides access to all types of data and allows participants to view, markup and interrogate even native product data (MCAD, ECAD) with only a Web browser. Discussion threads, decision polling, action item management and history tracking are provided in an extremely easy to use user interface. And once decisions are made, the documentation of the decision process is automatic and available for future audit purposes.
Collaboration Suite Quick Conferencing™
This module adds real-time collaborative capabilities. Live application, desktop and document sharing is provided along with whiteboard and conference recording capabilities. Includes automated management functions such as scheduling, invitations, meeting summaries and action item capture.
Collaboration Suite Viewer
Upload 3d CAD files in a compressed format for viewing, measurement and markup. The built-in viewer allows users to view 3d files without a CAD system. Markups can be stored in the project attachments section for future reference .
Collaboration Suite Document Management
Making sure your co-workers, suppliers and customers have the correct file version has never been easier. Built in document management capabilities allow you to track your version history, lock files and secure documents.
Collaboration Suite delivers significant business value to the Quality Management process:
- Clear documentation of processes and decisions aids auditability
- Simple template creation for your processes ensures repeatability
- Ease of use increases user adoption
- Easy reference to latest versions of documents eliminates errors in design, purchasing and manufacturing
- Greater visibility into design processes increases customer confidence and management tracking
- Greater accountability for tasks improves on-time delivery across all programs
- Earlier and more effective collaboration between design and the supply chain enables reduced and more accurately understood costs.
- Flexible process templates ensure that quality process protocols are documented automatically
- Better management of process steps and knowledge of issues improves product quality.
Collaboration Suite provides these benefits through its unique Quality Control technology:
A streamlined and simplified user interface supports broad adoption across widely divergent functional roles and technical expertise. Integration between project, process and product data enables rapid understanding of information and its context. The thin-client architecture efficiently handles large complex product data enabling effective collaboration across a globally distributed product team.
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