The system provided standardized electronic workflows and forms to consistently implement the company's RCCA methodology worldwide. It also offered flexibility to customize processes and provided enterprise-wide visibility into quality issues. Dashboards and over 50 customized reports gave leadership and groups analytical insights. The system improved compliance and helped the company manage risks from quality problems.

1. CASE STUDY
MetricStream STREAMLINING ENTERPRISE QUALITY MANAGEMENT
PROCESSES & SYSTEMS IN HIGH GROWTH ENTERPRISES
Overview
The Company is a world leader in unified storage solutions for today’s data-intensive enterprise. Its
storage solutions include specialized hardware, software and services, providing seamless storage
management for open network environments.
Challenge
Over the next decade, the Company built a mature and robust quality process, from product devel-
opment through customer service so that customers can be assured that the Company strives for
highest quality in every dimension of its business. As the company continued to lead the way with
technology innovations and new product offerings, the established quality infrastructure ensured that
Customer all the products would meet the same high levels of excellence.
A LEADING MANUFACTURER OF UNIFIED
STORAGE SYSTEMS The Company relied on its quality processes to handle and resolve recurring problems that occurred
within the Company, at its suppliers and those that were reported by customers and partners. The
company had instituted a Root Cause Corrective Action (RCCA) Seven Step Process and terminology
Benefits that was standardized across its worldwide locations. With the rapid growth in customers, product
portfolio, manufacturing sites, supplier base and channels of distribution, the teams starting facing
Accelerated quality processes, investigations, ap- challenges in following the RCCA process due to growing complexity and varied scenarios it had to be
provals, implementations and closure cycles with a applied in. The Company needed an system to implement its RCCA methodology consistently and to
consistent, streamlined, and paperless workflow ensure that investigation and resolution of quality problems and communication on progress was done
in a uniform manner across the company.
Enterprise-wide visibility and real-time access to
quality data and issues for effective status tracking The Company began to study the market for a quality management system (QMS) that would provide
and trend analysis with measurable performance out-of-the-box root-cause corrective and preventive action functionality configured in a multi-step
metrics workflow utilizing best-practice based electronic forms and templates. The Company also wanted the
solution to provide the option to reconfigure the workflows, forms and templates to adopt its RCCA
Incorporated best practices as appropriate and ability methodology as well as other industry standard models such as the 5-step Six Sigma DMAIC process
to re-engineer business processes as needed to and the 8 Disciplines (8D) process. Additionally, the Company wanted a solution that would enable it
improve efficiency and compliance to improve linkages and communications across its internal groups and sites and with its customers,
Web-based solution for the extended enterprise sup-
partners and suppliers.
porting users at multiple sites across the world
Reduced paperwork and elimination of redundant Solution
point applications and systems
The Company selected MetricStream quality management solution as it provided a closed-loop
enterprise-wide corrective and preventive action management system supporting root cause analysis
functionality to rapid identify, initiate, address, contain and resolve quality and compliance issues
within an enterprise as well as with its partners and suppliers.
Moreover, MetricStream also provided tremendous flexibility in how the solution could be configured
and applied to a number of different scenarios where quality processes had to be implemented. While
the system provided a set of complete pre-defined, standard, role-based workflows, it also provided
the ability to easily reconfigure the workflows based on business rules linked to a variety of criteria
such as issue type, origin, classification, etc.
The solution has been implemented to support unique data capture requirements, investigative needs
and information routing rules for 11 different process groups at including Customer Facing Tools, Hard-
ware Engineering, Software Interoperability Engineering, Logistics, Product Quality, Support Engineer-
ing, Support Operations, Technical Support Center, Operations and Test Engineering and Worldwide
Sales Operations. Across these groups, a consistent CAPA process is followed that goes through the
stages of issues initiation, issue acceptance or rejection, project planning, interim containment
action, collection and analysis of data, root cause analysis, corrective and preventive action planning,
implementation and effectiveness follow-up.
The MetricStream solution also provides multi-level role-based access controls essential for compa-
nies that have multiple locations, product lines and business units. The role-activity mappings clearly
define the privileges associated with different roles including roles played by external users such as
suppliers.

2. MetricStream
Given the different types of process groups and scenarios in which the MetricStream solution is used,
Why MetricStream the Company had the need for equally diverse set reports for meaningful data analysis. The data
analytics needed by the Logistics groups are totally different from the reporting needs of the Support
Embedded best practices for the hi-tech industry Engineering or Hardware Engineering groups. This was a key area where MetricStream’s built in
ready to be used out-of-the-box reporting engine provided tremendous value to the Company.
Flexibility to meet specific requirements and adapt to In addition to the standard reports, MetricStream has provided over 50 additional reports and dash-
changing business processes boards specially designed for each group’s unique needs. In addition, the business users are also
trained on the web-based Reports Wizard that allows them to create custom queries and reports that
Powerful reporting with executive dashboards for can be generated on an ad hoc. The users selects the data set which is the source of data for the
analytics and trending report and go through a series of screens to define which columns to display, the formatting, sorting
and grouping of the columns, the filters and coloring conditions, the report type and other options to
Web-based architecture that can be extended to easily create reports for their individual needs.
partners and suppliers for collaboration
For the Company, risks from non-compliance with quality standards include loss of key customers,
line shutdowns and higher internal manufacturing costs. The Company has demonstrated how high
growth manufacturing companies in the hitech sector can succeed in ensuring compliance with the
required regulations, mandates, standards and policies by streamlining processes and investing in
technology.
Initiate Approve Update
Role CAPA CAPA CAPA
Standard Users X X
Super Users X X X
RCCA Governance
X X
Leader
RCCA Program-
X
Leader
IT Administrator X
Assignee X
Initiator X
Accepter/Rejecter X
RCCA Team
Member
External Supplier
Standard Users X
External Supplier
Super Users X X
External Partner
X
Standard Users
External Partner
Super Users X X
Role-Activity Mappings
For more information, visit
www.metricstream.com
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