ETQ has recently been featured in a pair of articles discussing timely and critical issues in quality management. While the Quality Magazine piece takes a forward look at machine learning and supplier quality and their potential in QMS applications, the Supply and Demand Chain Executive article tackles issues occurring today – namely, the disruptive impact on COVID-19 on supply chains, product quality and quality management.
Quality Magazine shared our perspective on the role of advanced analytics and machine learning in quality management and QMS software. Here’s a brief excerpt of the article:
“There have been two sea changes since the widespread introduction of EQMS solutions in manufacturing environment—and a third change is on its way. In the first wave, manufacturers began to instrument and automate their facilities. They consolidated assembly procedures, removed manual and repetitive tasks, and introduced robotics. At the same time, manufacturers began to realize that their automated solutions produced data in massive amounts. Using this data at first proved challenging. Data scientists using early analytic solutions could only do so much, which meant that although manufacturers could derive insights from data, they couldn’t do this on a real-time basis or find hidden patterns. In the second wave, third-party analytic solutions emerged. These solutions took advantage of cloud scale and speed, to provide more accurate and faster insights. On the other hand, raw data from QMS solutions was not ready for analytics. Analysts still look a long time to clean data, perform extract, transfer and load (ETL) work, and construct data warehouses. Insights came faster, but still failed to achieve improve productivity or real-time feedback. With the past two waves, a third wave is appearing and is taking root among the best application solutions. The initial attempt on the third wave was mashing up QMS solutions with analytic solutions. These were loosely coupled and were not embedded in natural Quality Management System tasks and activities. While this mashup may have provided dashboarding, they were not tightly coupled within the existing QMS solution.”
Supply and Demand Chain Executive ran a lengthy piece on the impact COVID-19 is having on manufacturers, suppliers and supply chain quality. Our partners at Epicor were featured and discussed quality management and the flexibility required to thrive in a disrupted supply chain environment. Epicor QMS, powered by ETQ Reliance, is a cloud-based QMS that adds additional functionality to traditional ERPs and enables customers to better track compliance and supplier quality issues. Christine Hansen of Epicor is quoted as saying:
“Epicor offers a complete end-to-end ERP solution that includes a strong core quality assurance module,” says Christine Hansen, principal manager, product marketing at Epicor. “For many businesses, this manages their core quality needs for non-conformance corrective action, online inspection, training, preventative maintenance and engineering change that’s all encompassing within the ERP. For some of our customers, they have more complex regulatory and quality needs, so we also offer Epicor QMS powered by ETQ Reliance.” “A simple process might be a first article inspection, for example, or a process inspection, or maybe it’s receiving a return material authorization, an RMA, and the checks and the workflow that you would need to send to validate that,” Hansen says.
ETQ helps organizations realize the business opportunities that quality creates. Our industry-leading Reliance quality management system SaaS solution features built-in best practices and best-in-class flexibility, adaptability, scalability and usability to optimize the critical processes that drive excellence through quality.
To learn more about how ETQ can help you unlock the value of a supplier quality management system software, contact us today. Alternatively, reach out for a demo and find out how to smooth your quality journey.
