Consider the essence of web-based process optimization for
the enterprise. A scenario: Only hours into the week, individuals from
across the enterprise – worldwide – effortlessly access the information they
need to monitor processes and initiate changes for improvement. This continues in every
department and facility: product design, customer service, finance, and procurement;
multiple facilities in different geographic locations; as well as suppliers, strategic
partners, and sales channels.
It’s 6:00 Monday morning at a large manufacturing plant in California. As the
shift changes, the line supervisor launches her web browser to review manufacturing
statistics from the previous shifts. She sees a trend towards non-compliance on one
manufacturing line, and, checking the maintenance schedule, notes that the equipment is
due to be calibrated and schedules the maintenance. She then reviews manufacturing data
for an important new product line. Yield is slightly below projected volumes, so she sends
an e-mail to the quality engineer to review the process and to the product manager to
revise product availability projections for the sales force.
At about the same time, the materials director is in Malaysia, having spent the day and
most of the evening in meetings with a key supplier for the new product line. Before
retiring for the evening, he launches his browser from the hotel to check on the
supplier’s recent on-time shipment rates and conformance status and makes some notes
in preparation for his meeting the next day. The engineer has annotated the charts with
notes on specific lots, giving the materials director the data he needs for the next
day’s negotiations.
With a board of directors meeting approaching, the CEO also reviews the status of the
new product from his office in Chicago. From his web browser, he can easily review
projected-to-actual status for different divisions including manufacturing, product
development, customer service and finance. In several instances he drills down into the
data to better understand underlying causes. Using this corporate "dashboard,"
he quickly gathers the information he needs to begin developing his presentation. He sends
e-mail messages to several members of his executive staff requesting that they prepare
in-depth presentations on the quality status in their departments.
Traditionally, quality has been a function primarily of the manufacturing division of
companies focused on producing a quality product in order to satisfy customers and
generate profits. An individual or small group of quality engineers used
process management techniques to measure and analyze manufacturing data such as yields,
cycle times, and adherence to standards. Then the quality group used this data to
implement new processes and procedures to improve quality.
As businesses became more complicated – with multiple product lines produced in
many different facilities, complex bills of materials, and worldwide supply chains –
tracking and improving quality has become more difficult. At the same time, companies are
recognizing that every individual in every division affects quality, and therefore
profitability. Competitive pressures are forcing these companies to review their quality
systems and processes throughout the enterprise. Forward-thinking companies have explored
a variety of options in an attempt to bring quality analysis to the enterprise. Some of
those options – and their pros and cons – are listed below.
|
Yesterday's Solutions
|
Pros
|
Cons
|
Desktop Applications
(e.g., spreadsheet) |
|
- limited
- no database integration
|
| Business Information
Systems |
- corporate support
- database integration
|
- requires client software
- expensive
- not designed to analyze quality
|
| Stand-Alone SQC
Software |
- designed for quality analysis
- database integration
|
- isolated to QC
- requires client software
- may require training
|
| Recently –
Web Publishing |
- information widely available
|
|
Enterprise quality requires a software solution that gives individuals throughout the
enterprise – from the manufacturing floor to the boardroom to the supply chain –
real-time access to customized quality reports that meet their specific information needs.
While most companies have enormous amounts of data, the data is not typically available to
users in a way that lets them quickly and easily spot trends, anticipate problems, and
identify underlying causes. The challenge is to provide a software solution that is
cost-effective; configurable to meet a wide range of information needs and skill levels;
easy to use, support, and access; and still powerful enough to provide in-depth quality
analysis information. Statit is enabling enterprise-wide continuous quality improvement today
with a powerful e-business application that simplifies the customization and use of
statistical analysis techniques by a wide range of users, and leverages web technologies
for easy, cost-effective access to quality data.
Statit e-QC is the only process
optimization software that uses web technologies to provide live, real-time access to
process analysis throughout the enterprise. Statit e-QC was designed to help companies
bridge the gap between their data and quality improvement. The use of Statit e-QC
is only
limited by the creativity of the enterprise. High level features include:
- Heterogeneous database access
- Flexibility in building a reporting/presentation structure for each user
- Full-featured, powerful control charting and statistical routines
- Deployment of reports (dynamic and static) across the enterprise via commonly used
browsers
Statit e-QC is a web application, generating reports and quality charts as web pages.
These pages are accessible by anyone in the organization using standard web browsers.
Enterprise databases are rarely homogeneous, but with Statit e-QC, it is unnecessary.
Statit e-QC lets you pull data sets from independent databases throughout the entire
enterprise, such as production, manufacturing, procurement, finance, customer service,
sales, etc., and neatly integrates the data in a reporting structure that is meaningful to
all. Statit e-QC can handle unequal data sets (such as missing data), can merge data sets,
and takes data from ODBC sources.
Statit e-QC also provides powerful drill-down capabilities that provide a view of the
underlying data for in-depth analysis through multiple levels. And users can add comments
to charts on the web with annotations.
Statit e-QC allows for extensive customization to access data from disparate databases
and provide analysis specific to a wide variety of users. Statit e-QC not only provides
quality information to traditional users (such as production and test), but also takes the
information "outside" to senior level managers responsible for capital
expenditures, product designers, customer service, and sales and marketing. The IT staff
can depend on Statit e-QC to easily create custom views, saving considerable time and
effort. Statit e-QC is easy to modify and distribute for moderate to power users, and
requires no web programming skills.
Statit e-QC lets users dynamically specify charts based on pre-defined reports and
parameters. Other products don’t have Statit e-QC’s built-in flexibility, and
only provide static information or are limited to manufacturing quality analysis.
Statit e-QC is highly sophisticated software that can be applied to any part of the
company, providing for real-time, dynamic and static reporting. It serves all business
metric applications consistently, from personnel to finance to customer service.
Statit has developed the first dynamic, web-based, process optimization application
for enterprise-wide use. Statit helps users at all levels within the enterprise
understand and manage processes and their outcomes for optimal quality, consumer
satisfaction, and cost management.
