Why Automating your QMS improves your Supply Chain Performance

Why Automating your QMS improves your Supply Chain Performance

For more information on the QAD EQMS system, click here

Dive in to the Penn Engineering EQMS case study

With great success comes great complexity.

As thriving automotive supply chains acquire businesses and add customers, choosing an automated Enterprise Quality Management System (EQMS) that harnesses AI can jumpstart a company’s trajectory. In a competitive landscape filled with actors racing to leverage paradigm-shifting technologies, doing so is more important than ever. 

In this episode of Auto Supply Chain Prophets, Mike Payionk of PennEngineering shares challenges and triumphs from his epic five-year journey to automate processes, standardize best practices, and consolidate data at all 12 of his organization’s facilities around the world. An impressive up-front lift, choosing and mastering a powerful EQMS proved invaluable to fine-tuning a sophisticated self-regulating system that purrs like a dream.  

Simply put, “It’s absolutely worth it.”

Themes discussed in this episode: 

  • How standardizing best practices dramatically streamlines inter-company processes
  • The challenges of consolidating legacy data into new systems 
  • The unique benefits of embracing an EQMS with cloud-based real-time visibility 
  • How automated QMS achieves built-in “set it and forget it” accountability within teams  
  • Why getting ahead of that trend now provides a competitive edge 

At the heart of The Prophets’ vision are “The 24 Essential Supply Chain Processes.” What are they? Find out, and see the future yourself. Click here

Featured on this Episode  

Name: Mike Payionk

Title: Quality Control Program Manager, PennEngineering

About: Mike manages PennEngineering’s Enterprise Quality Management System and is a stakeholder for its supplier onboarding and management. Also an automotive industry veteran, he helps ensure best practices are consistent in PennEngineering’s 12 manufacturing plants across the globe.

Connect: LinkedIn

Episode Highlights

Timestamped inflection points from the show

[2:08] In search of standards and excellence: Seeking to add continuity to a growing patchwork of decentralized companies, Mike cites the need to standardize best-practice documentation and customer complaint tracking as a key factor in PennEngineering’s decision to explore QMS automation technology. 

[2:42] Teaching old dogs new tricks: Incorporating legacy data into novel systems was one of Mike’s biggest challenges. The “we’ve always done it this way” mentality doesn’t cut it for people or processes.

[8:09] The suggestion box goes global: Lightyears ahead of filing systems and spreadsheets, automating their EQMS means that PennEngineering can see customer complaints live in one central system in real-time, from any of their facilities worldwide.  

[9:08] Falling numbers that are good for ROI: Mikes shares that the Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ) has decreased significantly at one plant after implementing an automated EQMS. Combined with increasing sales, this drop equals significant results for the bottom line. 

[10:22] Audits to die for: Utilizing an EQMS system based directly on Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) requirements, PennEngineering’s teams can proactively tackle the “low hanging fruit” of easily auditable offenses like scheduled document reviews by demonstrating to auditors how their system automatically prompts those steps. 

[14:58] Scream off the line before your competitors start their engines: Ford is the first company to require automation in its customer-specific requirements, and it certainly won’t be the last. Implementing automated EQMS software now will put you in a prime position while others are stuck reacting. 

[17:39]  Four deal-breakers for a quality relationship: To ensure exceptional outcomes, Mike needed an EQMS that was cloud-based, standardized documentation, improved Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) and made adding products during growth a breeze. 

[20:04] The bot doesn’t call the kettle black: AI and machine learning eliminate waste and increase efficiency by identifying identical processes miscategorized under different names.  

[12:22] The one thing: After devoting the better half of a decade to achieving tangible results with their shiny new EQMS, Mike has some pointed advice for anyone about to fill his shoes: know your stuff. “I got a heck of a lot more pushback when I was still learning the EQMS as I tried to sell major changes to different departments. Now that I know the system inside and out, not so much.”

Top quotes

[9:49] Mike: “This is our culture now. When a customer calls, we do this, then we do this, then we do that. You can easily see that no steps are missed because it's automated. We're actually getting to the root causes of issues and correcting them in the field, which has been fantastic.” 

[11:51] Mike: “The automated system will tell you, ‘Hey, it's due today. Hey, you're seven days late.’ It goes as far as, ‘Hey, you're 14 days late’ — and now it's emailing your boss.” 

[17:49] Mike: “We wanted to ensure we could access the data from all 12 global sites on demand. Now I can access it from my mobile phone from pretty much anywhere that has internet access — we joke around that if your printer has internet access and a browser, you can get to the QMS.”

[22:24] Mike: “The benefits you will see from an Enterprise Quality Management System far outweigh anything you could even imagine.”

[22:46] Mike: “Embracing technology is the way of the world, that's why we're calling it Industry 4.0. We're seeing some organizations still trying to fight that — the ones that don't jump on the train will struggle to catch up or be left behind.”

DOWNLOADABLE RESOURCES

White Paper
for Leveraging Risk Management in Automotive

Download here

Operational Restart Readiness
Checklist

Download here

The 24 Essential Supply Chain
Processes

Download here

STAY IN TOUCH

Keep in touch with Auto Supply Chain Prophet's co-hosts Terry Onica and Jan Griffiths on LinkedIn.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY:

QAD Wesbite

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