Quality Management 2.0 Blog

A Guest Post by LNS Research

I've been a sales engineer here at IBS for over five years now. I've witnessed firsthand the impact the financial crisis has had on companies. Recent events seem to be indicating a change for the better. Over the last year my trips to Detroit have quadrupled. As the health of the economy has begun showing signs of improvement, many of our customers, especially from the automotive industry, are significantly increasing production and sales. Every day I talk to customers who see the need for a quality control and for whom a quality management system becomes of significant importance. They believe that having a good QMS in-place is an important distinguisher from competitors. People are becoming more and more aware that Quality is not just a “service” that needs to be addressed but that it actually increases revenues and profit in the long run. Customer retention is continues to be recognized as critical to business health. A robust quality management system is recognized as the best safeguard of long term business relationships.

During my 16 years as an Account Manager with IBS, I hear the same comments from my prospects over and over and they go something like this:

Especially in larger enterprises, the tendency exists to implement multiple business software applications that address specific business requirements. Many of these specific requirements actually have a lot in common and fundamentally share the same foundation attributes. Those of us who spend the majority of time focused on Quality Management initiatives across global companies, consistently uncover many “Silo’ed” approaches to Document Management or more precisely Document Control.   Many different applications, software frameworks and variety of homegrown variations of workflow management solutions designed to manage documents and forms are found across many different functions.

I was conducting a planning session with a new client recently and as I looked around the room at the implementation team I asked who was representing EH&S? I knew they had purchased the EH&S modules but they weren’t represented in the project plan and time line they had presented to me.  The team leader responded that I would be meeting with personnel from the Environmental Management Group and Corporate Safety Team for separate planning sessions, plural.

LNS Research principal analyst Matthew Littlefield attended our 2012 User Forum last week along with many of IBS's partners, customers and prospective customers.  Mr. Littlefield recently blogged about how far-reaching quality has become in the organization - a concept that becomes manifest in Enterprise Quality Management Software (EQMS).  By this he means that because quality management touches virtually every business function across the enterprise so too must the software that is used to support it.  In his post he elaborates how EQMS is delivering the functionalities needed to centralize, standardize, and streamline quality management across the extended value chain.  In particular, he notes how the EQMS from IBS extends beyond quality process management, with a wide range of functions including production quality functions like SPC, unlike many QMS vendors.

IBS is focusing on Barcode Labeling Design, Print and Management within enterprise Quality Management Systems. Gain further insight at the IBS 2012 User Forum. See a number of Use Cases, such as Non Conformance Material Tracking; leveraging a collaborative approach to offering comprehensive Barcode Design and Print capabilities.

Andrew Zolli, coauthor of the book "Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back," in a recent Harvard Business Review interview relates a story from the auto industry that illustrates the importance of resilience to an organization. He also discusses the strategies for improving the resilience of an organization. 

I had the good fortune to live over a decade in a large artist colony on Cape Cod. On my daily walk I passed a yard full of different stones with several arches in varying stages of construction. I struck up a conversation with the arch builder and he shared some fascinating information with me.