A battery maker must recall thousands of units. A food packager discovers mislabeled products after they ship. An airline is unprepared for new inspection mandates.
Such stumbles are all too common, thanks to siloed data, misaligned priorities among employees and suppliers, and other challenges hindering quality control.
However, audit management and electronic quality management systems (AWS and eQMS) can help.
These software tools help everyone, from line workers to upper managers and suppliers, create closed-loop quality ecosystems.
These systems catch issues early in product lifecycles, transforming everyone into champions of quality.
Article Contents
The Challenge of Quality Management
Organizations routinely face challenges in quality management.
These challenges stem from overly complex reporting processes, a lack of access to root cause information, and poor engagement among stakeholders.
Quality management challenges:
- Generate supplier quality issues
- Hinder regulatory compliance at scale
- Prevent companies from adapting to changing market needs
- Trigger post-production corrections in the field
- Reduce productivity
Inadequate quality management processes often lead to quality being managed by a select few rather than becoming a collective responsibility.
Overly complicated software, manual reporting tools, spreadsheets, or even paper that can’t be shared across teams all contribute to the problem.
Democratizing quality depends on user-friendly AWS and QMS tools.
Key Features Of A User-Friendly Quality Management System
Features that make quality AWS and a QMS software accessible to everyone include intuitive interfaces, real-time data access, and mobile compatibility.
User-friendly QMS tools:
- Provide access to data across company sites in users’ preferred languages
- Enable customization without coding
- Integrate with other tools that users depend on every day
- Work where, when, and how users do, for example, on a mobile device, on the shop floor, or in the office.
User-friendly features let employees at all levels participate in quality management processes.
For example, they allow line workers to report quality issues before products go out the door. They also bring suppliers into the fold, enabling them to deliver more consistent quality.
The ETQ Reliance platform is also cloud-based, facilitating collaboration from a single source of truth for all user roles in any location.
ETQ’s native integrations with leading productivity tools foster consistent reporting across departments, partners, and roles.
Empowering Employees Through a QMS
Effective eQMS Software such as ETQ Reliance empower employees through:
- Information delivered when and where it’s needed to drive quality initiatives
- Seamless integration with other tools through APIs
- Easy configuration management
- Detailed reporting tools
- Access controls granting people access only to what they need
- Audit trails
- Robust data security
- Mobile access on iOS and Android
- Delegation tools
These capabilities foster a more engaged workforce and a culture of continuous improvement as everyone—from the shop floor to the top floor—gets involved.
The Impact of Democratizing Quality
Making quality management a collective responsibility creates increased accountability, improves regulatory compliance, and enhances overall quality.
These benefits extend across the supply chain as suppliers and contractors take part in the quality control process via integrations.
Process linking and data inheritance ensures common data across all applications, providing a single source of truth for quality information.
Data harmonization across the organization and supply chain provides benefits everywhere, including:
- More consistent issue reporting and data collection—even from anonymous stakeholders such as customers via web form
- Enhanced competitiveness through increased product innovation and faster corrections
- A more productive frontline workforce
- Reduced unplanned downtime
- Improved safety on the shop floor
- Operational best practices are shared across all lines and sites, increasing quality and responsiveness to quality issues.
Implementing AMS For Maximum Engagement
For successful AMS implementation, look for easy customization—for example, through drag-and-drop interfaces.
AMS tools should share data seamlessly with existing tools through out-of-the-box and API integrations. They should also offer training and support for employees to get up to speed quickly.
ETQ Reliance provides all of these prerequisites and more.
- Each ETQ Reliance customer organization works with its own account team, which is dedicated to helping it on the road to success.
- An online resource, ETQ Academy, provides training and certifications to help teams get the most out of the platform, day or night.
- An experienced professional services team provides support after initial deployment to help customers realize the full benefits of the platform in the future.
ETQ Reliance’s modular architecture lets customers start with core functions and grow with additional applications over time.
Overcoming Potential Obstacles
Resistance to change and technological challenges can impede successful AWS and eQMS implementation.
For example, siloed data—data sequestered in disparate systems that don’t share information—encourages “not invented here” thinking in isolated departments.
At the same time, incompatible technologies lead to cultural disconnects between the shop floor, management, and suppliers.
Getting everyone on board with the same source of truth—whether through a common platform or integrations—goes a long way toward overcoming such difficulties.
Tools such as ETQ Reliance, which provides multi-language support, also lower barriers to effective QMS and AWS processes.
Software For Effective Audit Management
The right audit management software can transform every team member into an empowered, engaged quality champion.
