Internal Quality

Manufacturers strive to differentiate on the basis of product quality. The growing mix of complex products and global expansion of operations requires a new approach to quality management. Many organizations are deploying either industry standard quality management methodologies such as Six Sigma and ISO 9000, or implementing other quality practices to reduce costs, shorten cycle times and improve overall product and process quality. This has created a need for organizations to have visibility into their quality processes and to implement systems that ensure closed loop quality processes and support easy access to and efficient routing of information.

Traditionally, homegrown systems, stand-alone applications or even manual paper-based systems have been used to manage product and process quality at departmental level. Such point-solutions fail to address systemic quality problems as they lack a broad enterprise reach. As a result, many companies are seeking to deploy enterprise class solutions that can unify quality management across their worldwide operations.

Related Products Document Management   Issue Management CAPA / Remediation Audit Management Training Management   Equipment Management Change Management     more ...

MetricStream offers industry's most advanced and comprehensive suite of quality management solutions. Leading companies are replacing their point solutions and paper-based systems with MetricStream solutions to automate their quality management processes, gain real-time visibility into their quality metrics, and reduce the costs arising out of poor quality.

Some of the best practices being employed by leading global manufacturers by leveraging MetricStream solutions include:

Closed Loop Processes: MetricStream ensures that all quality processes are well integrated to create a unified and seamless environment for quality related issues and data. The solution tracks events as they move from one stage to the next, even across departments and groups, to ensure a closed loop quality management process. For instance, a document change can initiate a training request and CAPAs triggered as a result of audit findings are tied to the audit.

Streamlined Corrective Actions: MetricStream allows uses to engage cross-functional teams to collaborate on development and implementation of corrective action plans. It enables triggering CAPAs, performing root cause analysis, assigning follow up actions while effectively tracking and routing cases from initiation to closure.

Efficient Audit Management: MetricStream allows conducting frequent internal audits to ensure that the established product and processes quality requirements are being followed. It provides capabilities to efficiently plan, schedule and conduct audits, allows audit findings to be reviewed and analyzed by a team, enables initiation of follow-up activities such as corrective/preventive actions when needed, and provides the ability to monitor the entire process.

Implementing Document Control: MetricStream streamlines document management and control processes for documents such as SOPs, batch records, regulatory filing, and quality reports. It enables companies to adopt an electronic and automated approach to managing and control documents across the enterprise with a centralized repository and tools for collaboration.

Tracking Nonconformance: MetricStream accelerates non-conformance review and approval cycles with automated workflow. It supports recording and automatic rule-based routing of nonconformance issues for review and disposition by the Material Review Board (MRB).

Real-time Reporting: MetricStream enables tracking quality issue and processes in real-time on executive dashboards and reports for data driven decision-making. It provides complete visibility into quality system database with comprehensive aggregate reporting as well as individual case status tracking. Graphical executive dashboards and flexible reports with drill-down capability provide statistics, analytics and trending.