Business Goals
- Create a single source for monitoring quality inspection responsibilities and results
- Expedite issue resolution and countermeasures
- Improve monitoring of quality process compliance
- Increase supplier quality accountability
Results
- Reduced application development time 73%, from 52 weeks to 14 weeks
- Saved ~$6.6 million over five years
- Achieved 300% plus ROI over five years
I had high expectations for Pega, and they have been met.
Challenge and Vision
Increase automation of quality processes.
This auto industry powerhouse has manufacturing facilities located throughout North America. Although well-defined, quality management at these facilities, as well as those of the automaker’s parts suppliers, was still largely manual. The established quality processes are memorialized in a series of binders of documented processes used for training and reference. The manufacturer wanted to automate key quality processes to improve controls, provide an audit history, and support compliance reporting.
How Square BPM helped
Streamlined quality management with cloud apps.
The automaker worked with Pega to create a Quality Information Management System (QIMS). The system would be supported by two initial applications: one for automating quality inspection responsibilities, and another for assembly line workers to identify and report issues. The quality inspection application uses Pega business rules to identify and assign appropriate inspection responsibility. Assignments, notifications, overrides, and reassignments are managed with the Pega 7 Cloud application. The assembly line app manages notifications to external suppliers and internal quality engineering. It applies Pega business rules to categorize each incident of non-conformance. Pega started by providing a Methodology Alignment Workshop. Though the company is not yet Agile, it is interested in rapid, iterative development. The Pega-led and the project team used the Direct Capture of Objectives (DCO) tool to quickly route requirements and design input to the development team.
Outcome
Faster issue resolution, better compliance tracking.
The project team developed the two production applications in parallel in approximately 14 weeks. This represents a major savings in application development time, as system development projects typically required more than a year for the manufacturer. Since implementing QIMS in late August 2015, the company can now track quality processes with suppliers, expedite issue resolution, and conduct quality assurance and compliance reporting. SLAs are also used to ensure timely responses from parties, and to track process durations. On the strength of this project success, the company has already started two other Pega projects, with three more on deck. Over the next few years, it will deploy at least eight more Pega-based QIMS projects, to further automate its supplier quality processes.
This auto industry giant was committed to automating manufacturing quality processes in an effort to improve its already legendary program of continuous improvement. The new automated quality inspection and monitoring system provides line workers and external suppliers with key tools to measure quality, expedite issue resolution, and improve accountability and compliance.