In case you missed it we just posted an article over in the Intelex Press Room called "Compromised Training Programs Can Sabotage Quality". It ran today in Quality Digest Daily which is an electronic publication from Quality Digest magazine (www.qualitydigest.com).

Written by Intelex's Content Specialist (and blogger), Paul Leavoy - this article offers a wealth of information on the fall-out from neglected training programs in both product quality and service. If you like what you read be sure to have a look at some of Paul's other insightful writing - his newly published whitepaper on purchasing safety management software is also a must read.

Intelex's Senior Product Specialist Dan Marcus and Account Manager Zeev Orzakovski are thrilled to attend this year's ASQ World Conference next week in St. Louis, Missouri. Intelex is proud to attend this quality-driven conference for the second consecutive year and we look forward to discussing our leading-edge solutions with other attendees.

Marcus and Orzakovski will be exhibiting from May 23 to 25. They will be onsite displaying Intelex's web-based, quality-focused software modules from our dynamic library to create a system that addresses unique quality management needs for businesses across all sectors.

So come by booth 912 to say hello!

We were delighted to get our invitation again this year to the Heinz Supplier Fair taking place tomorrow in Pittsburgh. Intelex's Senior Product Manager, Bevin Lyon, is heading down to meet with Heinz Quality executives from across North America, the UK and Europe.

Heinz has been using the Intelex system for over 4 years so they are very familiar with the software. Bevin will be sharing exiting news about Intelex and showcasing new updates and enhancements! Thanks for inviting us Heinz - we're happy to be a Gold Supplier!

When one of North America's leading food companies first approached Intelex, they were in search of a solution that would improve their system for tracking and re-distributing product that has been placed on hold in both their manufacturing and storage facilities. With their product being sensitive to expiration, any units that are not re-distributed efficiently must be discarded resulting in lost production and revenue. Historically the company used standard email as their communication method and Excel spreadsheets to store and track the data. They required a more sophisticated and individually tailored communications tool to better connect all parties involved, streamline the process and decrease lost revenues.

The Intelex System provided the ideal platform to track both internal and external holds of product and seamlessly foster a two-way avenue of communication between manufacturing and storage facilities, with all data in one easily accessible location. Specifically, Intelex's web-based iForm® application allowed for a custom "Product Hold" module to be created which was designed collaboratively with the client and Intelex development team to track the quantity, type, expiration and location of all product placed on hold and generate custom core reports and dashboards to manage the data.

With the development of the custom iForm®, implementation and roll out to approximately 30 manufacturing facilities and 50 cold storage facilities taking place in a three month period, a significant margin of savings was quickly realized as all product placed on hold was much more easily and efficiently tracked and re-distributed. With a first year recorded savings of $13.1 million and a second year savings of $9.8 million, in comparison to the email/Excel method baseline, Intelex's custom iForm® solution cultivated an impressive $22.9 million in savings in the two year period post implementation.

Find out how an Intelex iForm® Solution can help your organization save time, money and resources today.

Intelex Technologies is pleased to announce the FBI’s Aviation Section as one of our newest clients. The Aviation Section will be implementing both the Intelex Safety and Quality Management Systems which were selected for their high level of configurability, range of functionality, ease of use and implementation, as well as their capability to securely track and report confidential and sensitive data.  The Intelex systems will be implemented across all locations and will be accessible to employees bureau-wide.

In search of a solution that would foster the collection of all safety metrics from multiple locations into one central and easy-to-access platform, the FBI’s Aviation Section also required the capability to generate a 360-degree view of all safety-related incidents across the entire organization, permitting internal audits, increasing transparency into processes, and identifying problematic areas. Intelex’s web-based Safety Management System allowed for this functionality, giving each location the ability to independently log incidents which can then be tracked and reported on organization-wide. A flexible system with the ability to customize components (configurability) was another essential priority which Intelex’s custom iForm® application was able to address. Using the iForm® application the section was able to create an FBI specific hazard reporting iForm® to track all non-conformances related to flight operations, and from which problem reports can be generated from.

Intelex Executive Account Manager Bryden Waggott worked with the FBI - Aviation Section to identify the key requirements needed in their management systems and create an implementation plan that focused on safety in the first phase and quality in the second. “The main goal of the FBI – Aviation Section is to consolidate all aspects of safety, including incident reports, hazards reports, and training management into one central place,” said Waggott, “By implementing the Intelex system, the section will be able to significantly reduce the amount of time, effort, and resources that was previously required to produce safety-related reports and metrics. These are elements that will be critical to internal and external audit preparedness as well as gaining an overall visibility into areas for improvement. In Phase I, the primary focus will be on implementing Intelex’s safety management system while Phase II will address the capture and management of the metrics associated with the division’s quality management system.”

Achieving verifiable sustainability throughout the supply and demand chain can be a daunting task for any company, especially for those who have a substantial amount of partners involved from top to bottom. As global product manufacturers are now placing more emphasis on being competitive and environmentally conscious as a result of social, economic and regulatory factors, pressure has mounted for companies to apply a “lean and green” makeover to their product sourcing, logistics, transportation, distribution and operational practices. In order to address the challenges, issues and opportunities associated with this trend, The Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum in partnership with Global Renewable Energy and Environmental Network (GREEN) have developed The Acceleration of Eco-Operation initiative. A rich repository of resources and information compiled from industry experts and associations as well as a comprehensive industry survey, The Acceleration of Eco-Operation initiative is aimed at helping improve bottom lines through enhanced trading partner visibility, flexibility and sustainability across the entire global supply and demand spectrum.

The BPM Forum, a comprehensive online survey of supply chain, operations, finance and executive professionals representing multiple industries was conducted in Q2 of 2009. It was designed to gauge how companies are presently dealing with the challenges associated with current supply chain demands, costs and environmental concerns. One hundred and twenty five professionals from around the globe participated in the survey resulting in insights as to what are the common priorities, pitfalls and progresses that supply chain professionals are facing today. The results of this survey were paired in a report with the detailed insights from 20 corporate and faculty leadership committee members outlining best practices and viable solutions aimed at helping companies begin to implement efficient and environmental practices within their supply chains.

The survey revealed that “nearly 90 percent of the respondents said their management subscribes to the principles of Eco-Operation, and nearly half said their executives believe in this mantra to a large extent.” This is a promising indication of the level of acceptance and understanding by the participants as to the fundamentals of the Eco-Operation initiative. The corporate leadership committee members were also in agreement as to the cost, compliance and carbon reduction advantages associated with Eco-Operation implementation. Although a good understanding and belief in the principles of Eco-Operations was noted, the report indicated that most companies are substantially lacking the means, metrics and visibility into their entire supply chain to successfully execute any of them. Almost two thirds reported inadequate visibility across all the tiers and levels of their supply chains. This lack of transparency can have a substantially negative impact on performance. As stated in the report, “The lack of transparency into the operations of dynamic, multi-tiered supply chains may be severely hampering business performance. Survey respondents identified the top business benefits of greater visibility as cost savings, better customer support, and environmental compliance – three key elements in today’s business landscape.” Also, better standards and key performance indicators (KPI’s) was identified as a nearly universal need among supply chain professionals as a means of measuring the sustainability levels of supply chain partners.

The report notes one of the driving forces behind Eco-Operational strategies and practices as the advent of web-based management platforms as a means of “increasing collaboration, real-time insight and rapid adaptability across today’s high performance, multi-enterprise value networks.” Such platforms, like Intelex’s web-based Environmental and Quality Management Systems work to foster a greater level of transparency and sustainability across the entire supply chain. Being web-based allows for a highly collaborative approach to monitoring your entire value chain as each supplier can easily access and use the system across multiple sites allowing for real-time reports and dashboards to be generated at anytime, ultimately giving you a 360 degree view of your entire operations.  With the BMP Forum survey indicating only 20 percent of participants as using a single hosted platform to improve such visibility; organizations who have implemented them have substantially realized measurable improvements in business and sustainability performance.  By investing in a web-based management system like those offered by Intelex, your organization is taking a step forward towards fulfilling corporate responsibility duties while at the same time streamlining operations, reducing costs, increasing sustainability and ultimately lowering your bottom line.

Read the full report here: Acceleration of ECO-Operation: Achieving Success & Sustainability in the Supply Chain

There are many ways that an organization can go about retooling their operations and processes to produce a better end product or service. The fundamental challenge in achieving any improvements comes in finding ways to accomplish them while at the same time saving time and money. One such method of unlocking potential performance, while saving both time and money, is that of implementing operational change to your organization’s structures and procedures. “Beyond Headcount Reduction,” a recent article featured in Quality Magazine, written by Peter J. Sherman, lead instructor at Emory University’s Six Sigma Program in Atlanta GA, outlines the principals of operational change as well as the impact it can have on an organization’s output, level of service and ultimately their bottom line.

Sherman begins by first addressing the fact that the majority of businesses today are in an extremely defensive posture as a result of the recent decline of the economy. With many organizations having eliminated staff, froze salaries, cut hours, reduced overtime, and cut back services, the general solution to managing business during the recession has been to reduce workforce and freeze spending in order to cope and hopefully come out on top. Sherman believes that near-term solutions like these will ultimately have a negative impact in the long-term. He suggests that reducing costs and headcount will likely cause organizations to enter into an endless cycle of quality issues and declining revenues, while at the same time leading to future pressure to reduce costs again and again. A more effective solution, according to Sherman, is to implement operational change. As Sherman states, “Rather than solely focusing on reducing costs and headcount, operational change is needed to unlock performance and create real and sustainable value for an organization. Operational change means looking within to change and improve business processes in order to save money.” More basic than applying process improvement methodologies such as Six Sigma, lean or ISO 9000 standards, operational change is equally effective for both small businesses and large corporations regardless of industry. Operational change is essentially looking at your organization from the inside and identifying and improving core operational processes in order to obtain the same or an improved level of service or output with lest cost.

In order to achieve operational change, Sherman offers four management principles that when implemented will help to unlock performance within your organization. These principals cannot be applied overnight but rather must be implemented layer by layer systematically in order to benefit fully from them. Sherman’s four principals are as follows:

Layer 1 – STANDARDIZATION
Although standardization is sometimes viewed as a deterrent to innovation, it plays a critical role in streamlining operations and initializing the implementation of operational change. Seemingly an obvious principle, many large companies have just begun to apply standardization in order to foster a consistent customer experience and reduce operating costs. Standardization should be applied to areas of operation where there are inconsistencies within processes that directly increase cost.

Layer 2 – INTEGRATION
Integration is the second principal involved in executing operational change. Having systems and processes in place that can accommodate any new product, regulation change or new growth will ultimately lower costs and save time. Having to manage work-arounds and one-offs becomes tedious and costly. The ideal operation should consist of a seamlessly interlinked set of systems and processes to support the full customer life cycle from sales to billing to delivery to customer service.

Layer 3 – CENTRALIZATION
The third principal is centralization, which Sherman defines as removing redundancies and achieving economies of scale. More simply put, centralization implies organizations performing like functions in fewer locations with fewer suppliers or venders. Some typical operational functions that centralization can be applied to are advertising, accounting, purchasing, human resources, information technology and legal.

Layer 4 – OPTIMIZATION
Upon completion of implementing the processes of standardization, integration and centralization, your organization should have experienced some transformational challenges. At this point it is important to optimize performance in order to maximize value. To achieve sustainability, continually streamlining systems and processes is imperative and applying proven process improvement methodologies such as Six Sigma and lean can be effective at this point.

Implementing operational change through Sherman’s four management principles offers one approach to improving an organization’s level of service and output and ultimately increasing the quality of their products and customer experiences. A web-based Quality Management System like the one offered by Intelex Technologies in conjunction with the implementation of operational change will provide any organization a comprehensive and easy to implement solution for tracking, monitoring and reporting all quality issues throughout the transformation process and beyond.

As announced in an article posted on Quality Magazine's website, a new ISO standard defining the Quality Management System requirements for suppliers to the automotive sector has just recently been published. ISO/TS (Technical Specification) 16949:2009 was jointly developed by the members of the International Automotive Task Force (IATF) and submitted to The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for approval and publication. The new document comes in the wake of a review conducted of its predecessor ISO/TS 16949:2002 which was carried out by the IATF and ISO Technical Committee ISO/TC 176. No major changes to the standard’s technical requirements have been made; instead the updates mainly consist of improvements to management requirements to reflect the content of quality management systems standard ISO 9001:2008 and an improved consistency with the environmental management system standard ISO 14001:2004.

The 2002 version has been used by major automotive manufacturers to approve the more than 35,000 organizations worldwide that produce and supply parts for the automotive industry. Implementation of ISO/TS 16949:2009 is seen as an opportunity for automotive suppliers to improve quality while reducing costs and the IATF has set a transition period of 120 days from the date of publication (June 15th 2009) to comply with the new requirements. As the article quotes ISO Secretary-General Rob Steele, "With the global nature of the automotive industry quality management systems based on ISO/TS 16949:2009 throughout the supply chain will serve to streamline operations, and thus help organizations cut costs while improving efficiency," commented Steele, "The publication of ISO/TS 16949 will assist the sector, reassure consumers and ensure significant benefits for automotive suppliers amid the challenges facing the industry." As organizations begin to implement the new specifications associated with ISO/TS 16949:2009, improvements should  be seen on an ongoing basis as the new standard is aimed to foster the development of a quality management system that emphasizes continual improvement, specifically focusing on defect prevention and reducing variation and waste in the supply chain. A Web-Based Quality Management System such as the one offered by Intelex Technologies provides the tools, adaptability, power and support needed to comply with and surpass ISO standards, all in a web-based system that is easy to use and implement organization-wide.

We're pleased to announce that Intelex has been chosen by Telenor Pakistan to provide them with a web-based software solution designed to address all aspects of an effective telecommunications quality management program including document control, nonconformance and corrective-action tracking, and audits management, etc.

Telenor Pakistan is a subsidiary of Telenor ASA – a telecommunications service provider in 13 countries across Europe and Asia. Since its launch in 2005, Telenor Pakistan has become the single largest direct European investment in Pakistan to date, which as a result has contributed to its success as the fastest growing mobile network in the country, with coverage reaching deep into many of the most remote areas of Pakistan.

When Telenor Pakistan began shopping for a software provider, they identified several requirements for the solution that would best meet their needs, the top three being an easy-to-use document control system, a reliable audits management program, and the ability to streamline TL9000 initiatives organization-wide. We knew that our out-of-the-box quality management system didn’t address TL9000 requirements so we used our iForms^® technology to build custom forms and reporting capabilities that would comply with TL9000.

"In what is an exciting, fast moving market, Telenor Pakistan always needs to be ready to meet growing market demands and offer reliable and robust services that our customers demand of us. Choosing a TL9000-based QMS is a step in that direction. TL9000 includes all the ISO 9000 requirements, and 90 additional requirements specific to the telecommunications industry. However, what really sets TL9000 apart from ISO 9000 are the set of measurements, which can be benchmarked globally under various product categories. We selected Intelex because it's QMS, iForms^®, and reporting software could be easily configured to manage the TL9000 measurements, in addition to the standard requirements of ISO 9000. We look forward to a rewarding partnership between Telenor Pakistan and Intelex Technologies," said Khalid Shehzad Chief Technology Officer of Telenor Pakistan.

"Telenor Pakistan has only been around since 2005; however, in just four years they've become the dominant player in the telecommunications industry in Pakistan. They have experienced tremendous growth over the last few years by dedicating themselves to providing their customers with a superior product and customer service," commented Mark Jaine, President and CEO of Intelex Technologies Inc. "Implementing the Intelex Quality Management System with iForms^® is just another way for Telenor Pakistan to solidify their commitment to providing high-quality services."

The purpose of a quality management system is to enable continual improvement regardless of market conditions; therefore, organizations that had the foresight and business smarts to have implemented effective quality management systems prior to the current recession have been proactively refining their business processes, minimizing the potential for nonconformance expenses, and enabling complete performance visibility as opposed to implementing last minute reactionary decisions intended to cut costs quickly. Invariably the "quick fix" approach to reducing the bottom line will directly impact product and service quality, which will ultimately have a negative impact on revenue generation.

The article "Prepared for Battle: Defend yourself in any economy with sound quality management" by Peter Grossi in this month's Quality Progress magazine delves much more deeply into the concept that businesses with existing quality management programs are better positioned to adapt during difficult economic conditions. "What organizations need to keep in mind, however, is that while the impact of a recession may be significant from a psychological perspective, in reality the application of sound quality management principles has a much more significant effect on an organizations success than the state of the economy."

So where does that leave businesses that don't have a quality management program in place? It leaves these organizations with a significant opportunity to improve their performance and strengthen their business operations so that they too can prosper regardless of the economic climate.

To read Peter Gross's complete article please visit the Quality Progress website. For information on the Intelex Quality Management System you can register for a live demonstration or free trial access online.