When working across multiple operational facilities and cross-functional teams, manual reporting of potential nonconformities, customer complaints, and issue investigation makes it exceedingly difficult to track, follow up on, and resolve quality issues.
This roadblock and its welcomed solutions were discussed at length during dedicated sessions held at the 2022 Benchmark Gensuite® Impact Conference in Orlando earlier this year. In this blog post, we will be recapping one session, Quality and Operational Programs: Quality Programs, which delved into Benchmark Gensuite®’s fully configurable Quality Concern Reporting software which helps identify, share, and resolve quality issues with ease.
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Subscriber Showcase: TK Elevator
During the Subscriber Showcase, participants heard from Michael Melnyk, Ph.D., Head of Quality, North America at Benchmark Gensuite® Subscriber TK Elevator (TKE).
With over 50,000 employees in 1,000 sales and service locations spread across the globe, TKE’s quality concern reporting (QCR) processes are a serious undertaking. But, as Melnyk shared during the Impact 2022 Conference, Benchmark Gensuite®’s solutions enable the TK Elevator quality team’s pursuit of quality and incident management excellence through programmatic transformation. Melnyk put it plainly, “we are with Benchmark because it works.”
Melnyk further shared that TK Elevator is looking to improve the efficiency of its QCR review, coding, and escalation workflow. Currently, all of TKE’s QCRs are manually reviewed and coded based on an internal library of codes/definitions used by the TKE quality team. Based on the codes, QCRs are escalated to different teams for follow-up investigation and closure.
Enter Benchmark Gensuite®’s Quality Management System software suite–which helps to reduce labor and manual review burden of initial event tagging and escalation by moving towards a more sophisticated QCR automation workflow based on verifiable data and insights.
“Prior to adopting digital solutions like those from Benchmark, the data was coming in but we weren’t doing anything with it. The accomplishment was capturing the data, not doing anything with the data… now, it is easier to quantify the true business impacts of issues in the field and factories,” explained Melnyk.
In addition to utilizing existing data to improve bottom-line outcomes and get ahead of recurring issues, teams enjoy working with Benchmark’s intuitive platform. When reporting issues on the fly, it is crucial that the technology works for the team and that citing incidents becomes a quick and painless process. Melnyk shared that his team in the field “love(s) the mobile capabilities because of how simple and easy it is to use, in fact it now takes them only 90 seconds to enter the case,” once again emphasizing a core strength of Benchmark’s product offerings—usability.
Quality Management Software
Benchmark’s Kent Kelsch, Associate Vice President of Subscriber Services, explained how professionals need effective tools that streamline the processes for communicating quality issues, ensure issues are corrected and timely follow-ups are provided to relevant stakeholders. This, in tandem with advanced analytics can help identify and monitor issue trends to enable end-users to deploy preemptive product quality improvements and mitigate lifecycle repair and warranty costs.
Too often, quality program leaders try to tackle these problems by relying on outdated technology or manual tracking methods (i.e., pen and paper) to report quality defects and potential issues observed in the field. This can lead to communication mix-ups, delayed response times, and resources allocated to preventable costs, among other operational inefficiencies.
However, as Kelsch shared, the right digital platforms equip end-users (i.e., employees, contractors, customers, and site visitors) with the means to remotely log concerns and customer complaints, drive action, and identify trends. For instance, new standard features in Benchmark Gensuite®’s suite of Quality Management System software solutions provision end-users with a “batch upload template” within the Quality Concern Reporting application, an active feature that goes far beyond the conventional, manually administered digital spreadsheet.
Beyond updates to Quality Concern Reporting, new features in Quality Incident Management programs make it easier for subscribers to escalate recorded quality events to Benchmark’s interoperable Action Tracking System software for corrective action and follow up, and link with Quality Concern Reports to escalate events. New standard features, including an analytics dashboard and continuous improvement tool, were created with enhanced usability in mind.
And the work is not done. Benchmark Gensuite® is committed to leveraging user feedback to refine both recently added and legacy capabilities, as well as developing brand new features, including a Quality AI Advisor for Concerns, Quality Concern Reporting – Share It Form, and an FMEA Assessment Tool.
Looking Forward
To wrap up the session, Susan Rufai, Benchmark Gensuite® Senior Customer Relationship Manager, showcased a number of new and improved solutions Benchmark is working to integrate within the Quality Reporting application suite. Rufai emphasized that when looking at which product improvements and enhancements to undertake, the Benchmark team relies heavily on subscriber feedback and interest.
With that in mind, Benchmark is working on embedding an 8D problem-solving template within existing applications. With this new template, subscribers like TK Elevator can schedule and assign ad-hoc or recurring tasks associated by department, location, or product; manage assignments, custom scoring, and reporting capabilities; and integrate barcode and QR functionality for quick access to requests on the go, and more.
As we prepare for the final quarter of 2022, stay tuned for product announcements and schedule your Quality Reporting Software Tools demo today!
