Leading companies differentiate themselves through quality products. Incorporating quality throughout the product lifecycle, however, can be easier said than done. In our experience with organizations in a wide variety of industries, Excel spreadsheets and email are often the tools of choice for quality and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) tracking. Unfortunately, this approach reinforces business silos and can lead to communication gaps.
When defined quality processes aren't in place, it's tough for teams to manage deviations effectively. Key stakeholders may not be aware of critical problem reports or corrective and preventive actions (CAPAs). If engineering doesn't know about customer issues, creating better designs to support continuous improvement won't be on the team's radar.
Implementing a comprehensive PLM solution like Autodesk Fusion Lifecycle can help. Organizations that use Fusion Lifecycle to support their quality initiatives enjoy numerous benefits:
- Easy process checks and electronic approvals increase organizational visibility into quality issues. The Fusion Lifecycle user interface is highly configurable. Each team member has visibility into their work and can see the priority of different tasks. When a problem report is created, users can initiate corrective actions or link an existing CAPA to the problem report. Within a problem report, it's possible to assign approvers and Fusion Lifecycle will automatically route them to the right people for approval.
- Consistent and repeatable processes reduce and eliminate bottlenecks. Problem report and CAPA workflows show the current stage of the process. Users can click on any state in the workflow flow chart to see who is responsible. Users can also document the process and add notes to the workflows.
- Real-time metrics and reporting offer insight into the health of the business. Fusion Lifecycle includes a configurable dashboard where quality charts and graphs can be displayed. It's easy to see trends such as CAPA duration by month or problem reports by customer. Users can also export reports to Excel to further analyze and manipulate the data.
Organizations find that it's easy to integrate Fusion Lifecycle into their quality processes. Since Fusion Lifecycle is software-as-a-service, there's no hardware or software to deploy or manage. It's easy to integrate Fusion Lifecycle with other business systems like ERP, CRM, or vendor management solutions to automate data exchange.
It's possible to start small with Fusion Lifecycle and then expand use of its capabilities over time. Fusion Lifecycle supports continuous improvement through a comprehensive set of quality-related functionality. It also can handle document management, BOM tracking and visibility, change orders and other change management needs, product and program management, logistics, and supplier management. For more information on managing your quality processes with Fusion Lifecycle, view our on-demand webcast.
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