Achieving quality excellence while reducing costs – Product Genealogy

This is the last blog in a series of 4 blogs concerning the topic of quality assurance.

When issues arise in a chemical company it is extremely important to be able to react quickly and accurately. However, many chemical companies have huge piles of data scattered across multiple systems. Employees need to be able to quickly and efficiently analyze their data to pin-point the origin of the problem and fix it. Knowing exactly which ingredients were used in what product batch can help reduce damages immensely. Then, being able to detect which batches have been affected not only reduces risks and damages, but also increases customer satisfaction and trust in the long-run. Imagine for example a supplier realizes his products do not meet specifications after sending them your way. Companies in this case need a comprehensive system that can sort out the damaged ingredients before delivering them to customers. Product genealogy offers companies that solution.

Finding the root cause of the issue is essential. No company wants to receive quality complaints on a product and not be able figure out which batches have been affected by the problem. Through a complete product genealogy on SAP software, companies have the ability to organize a comprehensive view of the entire product line. When a company needs to find the root-of-origin of an issue, they can direct the system to go through the data and pin-point where the defect product ingredients were purchased, what batches they were used in, and how many batches have been affected. This helps speed up the analysis of an issue, and helps companies make educated decisions on fixing the problem. This process, which used to take days when done manually, is now done in minutes mitigating financial risks, consumer health risks, and associated corporate liabilities.

Without a proper product genealogy structure, our power cleaner chemical company example from the previous blogs wouldn’t have been able to accurately respond to the leak complaints. Knowledge of internal and external distribution information, along with batch ingredient information gave the company the essential oversight to quickly address the issue and fix it before further damage were done. To stay competitive in today’s market, product genealogy has become a staple for chemical companies.

This blog wraps up the series on integrated quality assurance. By combing all the various quality solutions, companies have an extensive and comprehensive system to deal with any quality issues that may arise. In an industry filled compliance regulations and high quality standards, these quality controls systems and applications should be seen as must have assets to chemical companies. Please use the comment space below to share your thoughts on the entire blog series. Feel free to include personal beliefs, professional experiences, and observations.

Be sure to view the rest of the blogs in this series:

Quality by Design- http://scn.sap.com/community/chemicals/blog/2013/07/25/achieving-quality-excellence-while-reducing-costs–quality-by-design
Item Serialization and Product Traceability- http://scn.sap.com/community/chemicals/blog/2013/07/30/achieving-quality-excellence-while-reducing-costs-item-serialization-and-product-traceability
Quality Operations- http://scn.sap.com/community/chemicals/blog/2013/08/05/achieving-quality-excellence-while-reducing-costs–quality-operations