ETQ Innovation Excellence Award Finalists 2021
Reliance Customers Pushing Boundaries in Materials Science, Healthcare and Agriscience
ETQ customers are special. For many manufacturers, quality is seen as a checkbox—you spend some money, you achieve “quality,” and then regulators allow you to sell your product to the buying public. ETQ customers know better, however. For an ETQ customer, quality is applied throughout the entire product lifecycle—and it’s more than a cost center. Rather, quality is a way for ETQ customers to continually improve their businesses and delight their customers.
While we love all our customers equally, ETQ honors a few of its most innovative customers every year with the ETQ Innovation Excellence Awards. These customers lead the way in terms of how they implement our Reliance QMS software, finding uses for our applications that we ourselves can barely even predict. These quality innovators help set an example for others as to “the art of the possible” as we work together to build the quality organization of the future.
This year’s finalists include:
- Corning: a leading innovator in materials science
- Johnson & Johnson: the world’s largest healthcare company
- Syngenta: an agriscience firm currently operating in 90 countries
Each finalist presented their award application during ETQ Quality Vision 2021, our annual customer conference which took place virtually from April 6-9. Each finalist was able to demonstrate high achievement against a rigorous rubric, showing a project that was relevant to our core markets, produced a meaningful ROI to their business, and maximized the capabilities of Reliance, our flagship QMS application suite.
Corning’s Material Science Innovation is Backed Up by Reliance Document Control
Even if you don’t know what Corning does, one of its products probably lives in your smartphone. Corning is best known for Gorilla Glass, an extremely powerful synthetic glass that has formed the screen for over 6 billion mobile devices. In addition, the company has made powerful advancements in the fields of life sciences, environmental technologies, optical communications, and more.
Corning began their newest implementation of Reliance by looking for areas that hadn’t previously been served by QMS. They chose Document Control with the goal of using process automation to reduce the time and effort being spent in that area. By doing this, they were able to simplify the process of importing documents with rich associated logic approval controls from legacy applications. This means that by using Document Control as a springboard, they were able to rapidly modernize QMS systems in other corners of their organization, reduce implementation timelines, increase productivity and reduce costs.
Johnson & Johnson Standardizes Complaint Management Across Key Divisions
Johnson & Johnson is the largest healthcare company on the planet. With so many large and diverse organizations under the same umbrella, it can be difficult for different departments to communicate. Given that there’s so much at stake, however, this kind of communication is essential.
Johnson & Johnson used Reliance QMS applications to harmonize its complaint management system across departments. This means that every complaint form now collects the same kind of data, and every relevant stakeholder now receives the same information when viewing a complaint. This improves compliance while helping the company rapidly triangulate the source of any customer dissatisfaction. To date, this standardization effort has saved the company $1.45 million per year.
Syngenta Localizes its Quality Management Messaging
Syngenta is a global leader in sustainable agriculture. With a business presence in 90 countries, the organization needs to work with employees and customers who represent multiple cultures and languages. For Syngenta, it was imperative that QMS data be presented in multiple languages. This improvement would allow their representatives to respond immediately to any change in quality regarding their products or services without the need to wait for a translator or request clarification. Using the localization functionality that comes built-in with Reliance, Syngenta was able to automatically generate master localization files and then translate them using software hosted in Microsoft Azure. The localization system is currently live, and now serves 3,000 users with six different languages. This makes for a more responsive organization with less risk of error due to language misinterpretations.
ETQ Honors its Most Innovative Customers
ETQ may be one of the leading providers of quality management software, but we don’t know everything. We’re continually surprised by the resilience and creativity of our customers, and we want to honor those that set an example.
“We’re proud of Corning, Johnson & Johnson and Syngenta, as well as all of our customers – particularly as they have learned to adapt and succeed in a challenging environment during the past year,” said Robert Gremley, ETQ, CEO. “Our Innovation Awards 2021 recipients exemplify what’s possible when innovative companies, committed to continuous improvement and business excellence, harness the power, agility and scalability of our QMS to deliver real business value in new ways.”
The next time a new or existing customer comes to us asking about ways that they can use Reliance to improve their ROI on quality, we’ll be able to pull from a playbook that will include the contributions that Corning, Johnson & Johnson, and Syngenta have made. We definitely think that’s worth an award. Meanwhile, if you have questions about how to achieve similar gains—or if you want to put yourself in the running for the next Innovation Award—you should reach out to ETQ today!
