2013 World Conference on Quality and Improvement Focuses on Managing Change

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Alison Grenkie

Intelex’s Brett McLennan and James Coulen are in Indianapolis this week, talking to people about Quality Management at the 2013 World Conference on Quality and Improvement.

The annual conference is held by the American Society for Quality (ASQ), a community of nearly 80,000 quality professionals dedicated to promoting quality tools, principles and practices in workplaces and communities. With more than 100 sessions on this year’s theme, “Managing Change” attendees are sure to walk away with valuable information on maintaining and improving quality while navigating an evolving business landscape.

One of the most exciting changes is the ongoing development of a global marketplace, but with opportunity comes challenges: managing a global supply chain, ensuring compliance with international standards and regulations, and coordinating logistics on a global scale are just a few of the key issues that will be addressed at this year’s conference. The good news? Intelex may be able to help!

We offer many applications for environment, health and safety and business performance management, but understandably our focus at this conference is our Quality Management System. Intelex’s system allows you to integrate the management of all your quality-related activities across multiple departments and locations through one centralized online portal. Manage audits and inspections, ensure international regulatory compliance, manage suppliers and drive continual improvement, all from one spot!

If you’re at the conference and want to hear more about the Intelex approach to Quality Management, you can find Brett and James at booth #616. We hope to see you there!

2013 World Conference on Quality and Improvement Focuses on Managing Change

Evaluating EHS and Quality management software vendors: 10 essential questions you need to ask

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Paul Leavoy

In a flooded market of software vendors, finding the right fit for your needs can be a challenging. If you are seeking a solution to address EHS, quality, or general business performance needs, finding the best product for your business is critical and can lead to significant impacts on your bottom line. As a result, it is imperative to ask the right questions, both about the prospective vendor and the products they offer.

Some questions will be relevant the day you roll out your software, and some will be relevant months or years down the line. But asking the right questions today can save you money, time and headaches in the future.

1. Is the software able to generate automated emails and notifications from all parts of the system – not just core modules?

As your company gets more familiar with your software solution, your desire to automate more processes will increase. You need a scalable solution that allows you to grow your business over time without the risk of having to switch vendors in the future, a costly process.

2. Does it allow you to configure the screen layouts and change or add new fields?

As your company grows, you may decide to alter naming conventions, dropdown options, or add additional fields. If you can’t easily configure system elements yourself, you’ll have to return to the vendor for expensive customizations. You should seek software that allows you to configure layouts and add custom fields as your business needs evolve.

3. Can dashboards and homepages be configured? Can you set up different views of the dashboards and easily email dashboard contents to others?

As you become more comfortable with the software, you’ll identify more operations, trends, activities and KPIs to track. Look for a system that allows you to configure unlimited dashboards that refresh in real-time, providing an at-a-glance view on the status of key processes. You’ll also want the capacity to email dashboards directly to other employees, or to have them automatically emailed on a pre-defined schedule to managers, directors, VPs and other stakeholders.

4. Does the vendor have a mature support services program in place?

It sounds staggering, but nearly 40% of all implementations in this software industry suffer cost overruns, don’t meet deadlines, or even fail outright. In addition to getting assurance that your software deployment will be a success, it is vital to have quick and easy access to knowledgeable, friendly staff to answer your questions and address any challenges that might arise. The presence of an online community portal that connect you with others, provides resources like webinars training tools, and features a support forum.

5. How long has the prospective vendor been a player in the market?

While there are a number of credible, established businesses worthy of consideration, the EHS and quality software market is replete with startup and ‘fly-by-night’ companies. In evaluating software vendors, you need to be assured you are working with a company that is legitimate and boasts a strong presence in the market with a history of achievement. Since your chosen vendor will be handling, managing and manipulating your sensitive corporate data, you should be certain it can support a secure, reliable system.

6. Does the company have a large support staff and online community following?

If you are looking for a long-term vendor who will work with you, through all the challenges you may face, you need to know the company features a strong network of support infrastructure. Above and beyond a support line and email address, the hallmark of a business that deeply invests in the continued satisfaction of its clients is a robust online community portal that connects users with live support staff, training resources, technical documentation, and other clients. Such a resource is a testament to the vendor’s emphasis on customer service and support, and also signifies a commitment to transparency.

7. Is the company profitable and growing?

More than being an established player in this software industry, the vendor ought to be able to demonstrate both financial success and sustainability. As a client of a prospective vendor, your success in many ways will be tied to the company you choose. Find a company with a sound business model and a record of success to ensure the long-term viability of a business relationship and optimal ROI.

8. Mobility/Accessibility: Does the application support mobile devices and offer offline support in areas where you will not have cell coverage?

In this era of mobile communications, working solely from a stationary desk, at a computer is an increasingly irrelevant way of doing business. While stationary work will always be a dimension of the workplace, top-performing companies seek solutions that operate seamlessly across multiple platforms. In seeking your solution, find a vendor that provides a web-based solution that can be accessed and used on mobile devices such as smartphones and increasingly popular tablet computers.

9. Is the system able to handle multiple languages?

If you are an international business with sites spread across the globe, or if you have users that speak and read different languages, you would benefit tremendously from a resource that facilitates smooth translation of data and information across multiple languages. If this is a priority for you, look for a web-based system that allows multiple users to simultaneously access and manipulate data from different sites, in different languages, simultaneously.

10. Does the vendor have a narrow or broad focus?

Whether you are looking for a web-based system to manage your EHS, quality, or general business performance initiatives, your goals will evolve as your business grows. Any user who has had to access multiple software tools in disparate, isolated systems knows there is nothing more tedious than unintegrated, ‘siloed’ data. Since your business operates as an organic whole, no department, site or business unit is an island, and business decisions in one area will generate collateral impacts on other areas of business performance. When selecting your vendor, consider your short and long-term future needs, and consider whether a fully integrated management system might best accommodate your business goals. It will save you the time and headaches associated with managing common data across disparate systems as your business grows.

Intelex Attends the 4th Annual Food Quality Symposium

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Alison Grenkie

Bevin Lyon and Jeremy Mawson are representing Intelex’s Food and Beverage team at the NLS Food Quality Symposium this week in Indian Wells, California. The symposium is now in its fourth year and features industry networking and thought leadership from some of the world’s leading food manufacturers. Among the attendees are a few Intelex clients, including Bimbo Bakeries, Hillshire Brands and The Wornick Company.

Hot topics of conversation this year are the Food Safety Modernization Act and the recommendations for food defense measures that have been developed by FSIS and FDA.

Intelex’s Food and Beverage team helps companies manage suppliers, ensure compliance, keep their workforces safe and ensure the quality of their products. For a full list of Intelex’s food and beverage clients, visit our clients page.

Get back to the meaning of Quality with 9001: A Quality Odyssey

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Paul Leavoy

Think quality is boring? That can only be attributable to human error.

Sure: bolt sizes, calibrations, documents, procedures, work instructions…yeah, there’s nothing particularly compelling about all that, on the surface, anyway. Dig a little deeper, however, and you’ll be surprised what you find.

If you missed our exclusive webinar, 9001: A Quality Odyssey, check it out whenever you like by heading over to our on-demand webinar library. This decidedly un-boring special presentation will open the pod bay doors of your mind by getting back to the meaning of quality management and turning to the very roots of standardization.

Far from a boring history lesson, A Quality Odyssey will link the quality standards of today to the very need for standardization and measurement in the first place, and look at the evolution of quality systems throughout the ages and what they mean for businesses today.

Sign up today to learn how to put your quality system to its fullest possible use…which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.

New Intelex Case Study: BA Blacktop

Posted on July 20, 2012 by Maxim Ivlev

We’re excited to share our recently released case study regarding BA Blacktop’s success with Intelex’s Quality Nonconformance and Standard Safety Incidents applications. With unique objectives to streamline and unify their Quality and Safety management programs to improve tracking and monitoring processes, BA Blacktop turned to Intelex to help them achieve these goals. The end result was remarkable, including a 56% reduction in spills since 2009, noticeable improvements in insurance premiums over the past 3 years, and 18% reduction in motor vehicle accidents since 2009 to name a few.

To learn more on how BA Blacktop utilized Intelex solutions to ensure a strong reputation and driving force towards success in the construction industry, check out the case study today!

Download today!

Defining your quality initiatives

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Maxim Ivlev

Improving quality and efficiency in an organization can often seem like a difficult task, given the numerous approaches out there. Some companies believe their quality improvement initiatives are strong enough to withstand any obstacle in the marketplace, whereas other companies fail to have a strong enough stance on the subject entirely. This can be as a direct result of poor leadership and accountability, cultural resistance, and even poor planning.

In a recent article posted on QualityDigest.com, George Maszle summaries an excellent input-process-output (IPO) chart, called Quality and Productivity Improvement Processes, focusing on 10 positive factors that can be implemented in the workforce for a more productive and value-based development. Some of these factors include selecting the right people and projects, integrated training, and enterprise-wide knowledge training, to name a few.

Once these elements are executed across the board, they create five desired quality outputs as a result, which are: Improved value for customers, shareholders and society; improved intellectual capital; top line growth, bottom line growth; and positive cultural change. Based on these five performance measures, many organizations who implemented this formula, according to Maszle, achieved moderate results with certain inputs, while other inputs resulted in significant success.

Every organization is unique in its own way, resulting in different values, cultures, responsibilities, and ultimately different goal setting. Finding a sustainable quality formula that suits your organizational goals will help define positive characteristics within your company and bring you success moving forward.

U.S. hospitals realizing it pays to measure quality of care

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Lauren Craig

Ahead of a value-based purchasing initiative to begin for Medicare in 2014 under the federal government’s Affordable Care Act, hospitals across the U.S. should be taking a long, hard look at their quality processes and how they measure their success. Value-based purchasing under the U.S. healthcare reform means Medicare will start paying institutions more for scoring high on a series of measures that indicate patient care, and will pay less to those who do not meet the quality benchmarks.

While quality of health care is important if only to ensure patients receive satisfactory care, a few hospitals in the U.S. who earnestly measure their quality processes are starting to notice an additional benefit to ensuring the utmost care is delivered. One successful case is Detroit’s Henry Ford Health Systems, which launched a quality improvement program in 2008 called the “No Harm Campaign”. The program sought to improve patient care and reduce the amount of patient “harm events” that occurred. In doing so, over a four-year period and across its five hospitals, Henry Ford recently announced it saw $10 million in cost savings by reducing infections, improving procedures and preventing patient and employee injuries.

Tracking ROI of quality programs is relatively new to the healthcare industry. Henry Ford’s chief quality officer, William Conway M.D., admits in Quality News Today that “in most industries, improving quality reduces costs, but was not recognized in healthcare until only recently because insurers and Medicare used to pay hospitals for higher utilization generated by mistakes, errors or bad outcomes.”

Now that the new healthcare law signed under the Obama administration will begin zeroing in on quality of care metrics and directly linking compensation to achievement in this area, it’s expected that the industry will see an increase in the investment hospitals are making towards tracking, measuring and continuously improving the quality of their care.

Intelex on Quality and Cities in Municipal World

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Paul Leavoy

The need for quality management is apparent in an industrial context, but how about…a municipal organization? Well, just as quality management has expanded its reach from manufacturing to customer service, quality can have a huge role in any organization, including municipal corporations.

So check out the latest issue of Municipal World for an article I wrote on Quality Management in Municipalities. You’ll need a subscription to Municipal World to read it (unless you are already among their thousands of subscribers…after all, these guys have been around for more than 115 years!)

In the meantime, check out our recent webinar on Quality Management in Municipalities where Intelex partnered with The Town of Ajax, one of the very first municipalities in North America to achieve ISO 9001 certification. In this free 30-minute discussion, David Forget, Ajax’s Manager of Quality Service, joined Intelex to examine exactly how municipalities and other service-based organizations can benefit from ISO 9001 registration and streamlined quality management in general.

Quality management and ISO 9001…in municipalities?

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Paul Leavoy

These days ISO 9001 has become such a pervasive term, and while some might not know exactly what it means, almost everyone has seen the words pop up on the sides of manufacturers, machine shops, and other industrial facilities.

But while the quality management standard specification can apply to literally any business in any industry, many are still surprised to imagine that its scope goes beyond the walls of discrete manufacturers and processing plants. Indeed, it even applies to municipalities. Except, instead of describing a process for how a bolt is tightened, in the context of a municipal corporation, ISO 9001 might dictate how a customer service call is handled. In either case, the underlying methodology for describing the processes will ultimately be similar.

Those in the municipal sector who are looking to develop or improve a quality management program shouldn’t miss our our feature webinar, Quality City: The value of ISO 9001 and Quality Management in Municipalities. This joint webinar will be hosted by Intelex and David Forget, the Town of Ajax‘s manager of quality service. Ajax was the first municipality in North America to achieve full ISO 9001 certification, an accomplishment that David spearheaded.

Among other things, including specific examples of Ajax’s situation, David will discuss:

The benefits and ROI that flow from implementing a quality management program within a municipal organization.
The challenges municipalities can expect to face when rolling out a quality management system.
Getting buy-in for a quality program from senior management.
Why seek ISO 9001 certification for your municipal corporation.
The relationship between streamlined quality management and improved business performance.

Whether you work with a municipality directly, or in any other service-based organization, you won’t want to miss this opportunity. Reserve your spot over at the webinar registration page.