Supply chain risk, as well as business risk in general, come in many shapes and forms. The risk comes from the most basic everyday processes to some extraordinary circumstances that are often hardly identified.

With all of that being the case, organizations have found several different ways of managing risk, especially in the supply chain. To stay afloat and competitive in the market of the modern world, you need to have an excellent strategy to manage risk. Let’s take a look at some of the ways risk is managed.

The Change Management Process

The change management process should include the suppliers, because this way, you are making sure that they are notified of any change in the design phase. It means that the suppliers can always ensure that their components conform to the new design and are thus able to control the potential risks.

In essence, by doing this, you are making sure that your finished product has factored in both the supplier components and the production process, to ensure quality and reducing potential risks.

Supplier Performance Management

The accountability factor is the main obstacle to the quality in the supply chain. The suppliers have their standards, but if they can’t see your system, they cannot know how you’re rating them.

By having a proper supplier rating system that’s also tied to risk-based methods, you will ensure that your business truly measures the supplier’s performance. It will allow the supplier to see the ratings and they will then improve upon their quality if the grades are not good enough in their eyes. Every supplier wants to improve their quality and be the leading supplier to other organizations, so you can be confident that the rating will affect them.

Out-of-Specification and Non-conformance Management

Often, it can be the case that the components are out of specification. Usually, the business deals with the issue, inform the supplier and moves on. However, by automatically generating nonconformance and advising the supplier of what exactly is out of specification, you are ensuring that there is better collaboration involved.

All of this in effect ensures that both risk and severity of the said risk is reduced.

Corrective Actions

When it comes to managing any systemic issues in the supply chain, the corrective action process is your best solution, because it’s essential that there is a collaborative process that allows the supplier to finish some part of the corrective action.

In essence, it ensures that you are consistently able to improve the finished product, as well as allow the supplier to upgrade the components which are part of that same product.

The Post-Market Reaction

After the product is released, post-market feedback is inevitable. Complaints and a lot more are always a big part of this. If you want to respond to all this feedback adequately, it’s vital that you have all the information about the product. If the supplier is involved all the time, you will have additional information from the supplier as well. It, in turn, allows for better handling of the post-market.

Supply chain risk can effectively be managed with most of the techniques explained here, however, if you want entirely effective risk management that involves all of what we described here, an out of the box QMS solution is your best option. It is because the risk is no longer an isolated part of the Quality Management System, but more a feature of it.

It is surprising how many companies today are solving their need to customize their Quality Management Software by modifying source code.  It is understandable why a company may want to customize a software to meet its unique business and quality processes.  However, software platforms have evolved so much that there shouldn't be a need to change or add code to the vendor platform.  Not only does this require expensive development skills and expertise, it also means that the company can no longer receive vendor upgrades to their platforms as they have branched out with their own custom solutions.

Intellect has built a full Quality Management suite on our award winning Business Process Management (BPM) platform, Intellect Accelerate, to solve this problem and provide many additional benefits.

1. Below are just 5 of the many benefits of working with Intellect:

1. 1. BPM Platform with No Coding Required

2. BPM platforms are designed to enable companies to automate any business process. In addition, they are designed to enable constant changes to those processes. However, the process of automating a business process on a BPM platform does not require programming.  It is a drag and drop environment designed for business analysts and process owners. It enables them to control and make all the changes they want. They don’t have to rely on the vendor.

4. 2. QMS Suite with Incredible Flexibility

5. Intellect Accelerate is available with an out of the box QMS solution that includes all the core modules like Nonconformance Management (NCM), Corrective and Preventive Actions (CAPA), Document Control, Change Management, Audit, Training, Supplier Management and Risk Management.  But being built on a BPM platform means every one of these processes can be modified by the company to fit their unique needs and process requirements.  Companies can add, remove or modify data fields, change business rules, change the workflow model, create custom reports and dashboards, modify security settings and on and on.  All this can be performed quickly and through simple drag and drop, without programming or modifying source code.

6. 3. Automate Much More Than Just QMS

7. With Intellect Accelerate, you are not limited to just the QMS processes.  The platform enables automation of any business process.  This means you can expand and automate other processes like Customer Complaints and Returns, Project Management, Time Tracking, Expense Reporting, Capital Expenditures, HR onboarding, Employee Lifecycle Management, Inventory, Asset Tracking, Bug Tracking, Issue Management, Incident Reporting, Work Management and many others.

8. 4. Always Access the Latest Release

9. Despite all the configuration changes you make to the processes or additional processes you automate, you can always upgrade to the latest release, and get the latest platform tools, enhancements and bug fixes. You are not stuck with an outdated custom solution that can no longer benefit from vendor innovations because you have modified source code.  BPM is designed with the expectation that each company will configure its own unique processes and make changes to them.

10. 5. Advanced Workflow

11. BPM includes a core feature which is critical for compliance and audits – workflow management.  With workflow, you can model your process flows, assign roles and requirements, and easily track each process with status indicators, reminders, notification, escalations, reports and full audit trails. In addition, you can easily modify the workflow as your process changes and evolves over time.

12. The days of customizing source code to modify quality processes to fit a company's needs are numbered.  Sign up today for a demo to see how easy it is to use and modify the quality processes built on Intellect Accelerate.

Managing NonConformance (NCM) is an integral part of an organization’s continual improvement plan. Intellect’s QMS Platform enables organizations to capture, track and maintain accurate, auditable nonconformance records through a centralized database to have transparency for departments, sites, or locations. This allows organizations the ability to exceed audit, nonconformance, and corrective and preventive action requirements of common standards including ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001.

Complaints Management software is needed for customer retention, compliance with industry regulations and avoidance of potential product liability lawsuits. Quality, compliance, safety, efficiency, and costs are impacted in addition to poor communication without a proper QMS in place. Intellect QMS includes change management, automation, version control, and workflows to communicate, acknowledge, and then implement any requirements.

Change Management software is imperative for closed-loop quality and requires automation, version control, and workflows. Intellect QMS integrates with any enterprise system, so full transparency is included in the change management process. The submission of change requests and control plan revisions can be included at any point in production.

CAPA (Corrective and Preventive Action) and product registration tracking are standard features to allow implementation of corrective and preventive actions. This will meet compliance with industry regulations including GMP, ISO 9001 and 14001, TSCA, REACH, etc. CAPA process workflows provide a controlled environment and reduce the risk of repeat issues by ensuring that defined CAPA solutions and processes are met.

Document Control/management organizes all documents into a centralized database with approval workflows and audit trails. This eliminates document redundancy, reduces the risk of manufacturing products with out of date SOPs, and creates efficiency in organizing documents.

Supplier Quality Management manages the process of qualifying, selecting, and monitoring suppliers and supply chain partners. Other requirements are supplier qualification workflows and tracking systems for supplier non-conformances and CAPA. Intellect QMS offers the flexibility and configurability to adapt to company specific business processes, requirements and needs. This allows organizations to define, track, manage, and report actions.

Audit Software reduces risk by enforcing consistent and harmonized processes while securely managing all information in a centralized system. In addition, it facilitates compliance with global government regulations and industry standards providing management the data needed to evaluate audit system effectiveness. It also provides auditors authoring tools required in the field.

Employee Training Software creates a single interface to develop and manage training initiatives organizationally. This allows enterprises to maintain a complete inventory of employee education levels, job descriptions and certification records. This will maximize the effectiveness of developing employee skills internally. Intellect QMS keeps employee certifications up-to-date as a full employee life-cycle enterprise management system.

If you’d like to learn more and create a QMS Proof of Concept app with Intellect, click here for a free trial. http://www.intellect.com/free-trial