A corporate quality manager is responsible for ten plants in North America. Whenever he received a complaint from a customer, he would cringe – he felt like he was personally letting his customer and his company down. And he felt powerless to change the situation.
"It was difficult for me to understand which plants were doing well in certain areas and which plants were not doing well." Each facility had its own way of tracking defect data, and as the company acquired new plants, the problem worsened. At the end of the month, the corporate quality manager received ten reports of the plants’ issues and resolutions, each in its own format. Every month, he spent hours and hours compiling data and looking for patterns. It was next to impossible to figure out the root cause of the problem, let alone try to resolve it.
Disparate systems caused confusion. Customer complaints continued to mount. The corporate quality manager “could not guarantee customers were getting quality products.” The company needed to find a way to improve their quality across the board.
This data visibility increased at every level. Operators could check on their current production. Plant managers could see how their individual plant was doing that day. Corporate quality managers could get a bigger picture across value streams. And from that high level, they could drill down to the operator level within a few clicks. “Our executives could not believe you could drill all the way down to the employee who found the defect in a matter of seconds.”
With full visibility into trusted information across plants, continuous improvement methods that optimize the entire supply chain are now possible, increasing supply chain flexibility. The corporate quality manager can take pride in improving the quality of the analytics and the associated decrease in client-reported defects.
Ready to optimize your entire supply chain and increase its flexibility? Contact Hertzler Systems today and learn how GainSeeker and/or GS Premier can provide the trusted information and insights you need, as demonstrated in the case study. Discover how to turn your data into a competitive advantage and achieve measurable success.
Hertzler offers flexible deployment options to suit your specific requirements:
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