LQATS – Lyons Quality Audit Tracking System - Manufacturers & Suppliers Quality Audit

Product Information

Lyons Quality Audit Tracking System (LQATS)® is a robust, flexible, web-based solution to gather, analyze and display quality audit results generated by staff and suppliers of a manufacturing organization. The secured system offers staff and suppliers real-time access to create, manage, and report audit information in a secure data environment. LQATS gathers real time audit information worldwide from:

LQATS is fully managed by a company’s staff and permits changes to system support data as business strategies change. All system components and audit results information reside behind the manufacturer’s data firewall, and are maintained by a company’s staff. LQATS can be hosted behind a company’s firewall; fully hosted solutions are also available from Lyons Information Systems, Inc.®  As with all of our systems, an unlimited number of users and data collection sites are supported at no additional charge.  Our systems are supported by non-proprietary hardware and software and managed by system administrators at each customer site. Quality audit and inspection information within the system emanates from two sources: manual data entry, and electronic data imports of new and changed information from a company’s legacy database system. Examples of user-entered data include audits, inspection, and company specific information, files to make available to users when they login such as when product specification changes occur, news worthy information, etc.  Electronically imported data may include any commonly used file types or other information housed in legacy systems that need not be communicated to users after the LQATS login process.

Product suppliers, mills, distribution centers and other supporting locations that send product to companies using LQATS may perform their own out-going audits prior to shipment directly from LQATS of their customers.  The system is designed to allow access and creation of product audits and/or final inspections from outside supportive sources prior to shipment.  Quality comparisons between audits of products shipped by a supplier, for example, and received by a distribution location may be performed in LQATS as well.

Benefits

Value

Lyons Quality Audit Tracking System (LQATS) improves your competitive edge by providing real-time information about the quality performance of your suppliers. You can identify problems quickly and work with suppliers to improve their performance so that you can improve your bottom line.Quality audit tracking allows a company to focus specifically on quality audits, creating consistent standards and criteria and measuring suppliers’ performance in relation to those standards. As a result, companies can work collaboratively with suppliers to improve their performance. This results in improved quality and, therefore, improved profits and decreased costs.

One customer, for example, reported a 50% decrease in defects found at its worldwide manufacturing plants as a result of using LQATS.

Benefits include:

  • Improved supplier quality performance as a result of responses to consistent measurement
  • Corrective and Preventive Actions (CAPA) with audit trail 
  • Rapid return on investment
  • The ability to respond to problems quickly as a result of real-time data from strategic business locations
  • Decreased personnel costs as a result of automating data collection processes
  • Improved accuracy of information
  • Decreased costs associated with movement of staff to locations where information is to be gathered

Customer Testimonial

When asked by a prospective customer about LQATS, one of our customers wrote:“As you know data collection is sometimes a very cumbersome task, one that not only involves a great deal of effort in getting the data, entering it into a system, but then what do you do with it once you have it. What we have found out is that speed is most critical, in the fact that once the system and procedure on how to collect and enter it has been accomplished, then you can decide on how the system will respond. I will give you an example, normally it would take several weeks to compare data from a factory and my in field auditors, where as now we can achieve this in seconds. We have saved ourselves some very serious amounts of down time due to getting the data we needed in order to make the best decision. Data collection is in fact a preventive in the cost of quality, as you are using that data to make business decisions, whether the data is collected during or after the actual event. The question you have to answer is how much is the data worth, how fast do you want it, and how do you want to see it. We honestly found the solution in the Lyons program. I can assure you that the data we have received from our system has made us a better QA department in our efforts to be preventive driven.

We have also been able to reduce staff in certain areas, due to having our suppliers input data, that was previously done by my staff.

1. Speed of reporting 2. Ability to view data and analyze with in the same system 3. Very user friendly and training was minimal 4. Very flexible in adjustments to our business needs 5. The system helps in answering questions that may normally take weeks to have answers on

I hope this helps”. 

Features

Lyons Information Systems, Inc.®’s Quality Audit Tracking System is a robust, fully web-based software solution with a multitude of useful features that are easy to access and intuitive to use.

LQATS provides real-time entry, tracking, and analysis of quality audit data from Distribution Centers and Supplier plant locations. Features include:

  • “Smart controls” to minimize user data entry and retrieval tasks
  • Change History tracking
  • Quick search of data using many different query parameters
  • Real-time global performance monitor
  • Fabric Inspections
  • Six-sigma analysis
  • Disposition log
  • Data displayed in both tabular and graphical formats with output to Excel, PDF, and HTML formats

LQATS is managed from inside the company to respond to the company’s business rules and to change as the company changes. Features include:

  • User access is easily managed from user-defined Roles
  • User management of system support information
  • Company administration of user profiles, reports and access
  • Defects definitions are easily managed by category and type
  • Complete style information management including tolerances, measurements, etc.
  • Supports multiple AQL levels
  • Ability to manage sampling plans data and map to AQL levels

LQATS provides a real-time, world-wide view of quality performance at support locations of a company.

LQATS includes remote supplier access and secured reporting.

LQATS uses a non-proprietary database (SQL Server) and imports data from in-house legacy systems, including procurement, product, and supplier data.

LQATS provides flexible, robust and intuitive reporting tools in addition to the ability to query the database. These include:

Case Study

Lyons Information Systems, Inc.® installed LQATS at Cintas Manufacturing in July, 2003 in response to the need at Cintas to retrieve and evaluate quality performance across their worldwide enterprise. The valuable and popular solution has become a day-to-day work horse for the company

………

April 6, 2005

After many years of manual data collection and reporting, in 2004 Cintas’ Quality Assurance Department contracted the services of Lyons Information Systems, Inc.® to develop a web-based quality database that is accessible anywhere around the world. Like any IT department, there were many hurdles that had to be crossed in order to integrate a privately developed system into the company network. Lyons Information Systems, Inc.® met all the inter-company challenges presented before being awarded the contract and proceeded to develop what many within the organization now describe as a “tremendous tool”.Now we have the capability of reporting audit findings from the manufacturing plants, contractor facilities or internal distribution centers in a matter of minutes. Prior to development of this system, audit data had to be captured on hand written forms, entered into Excel spreadsheets, sent to a designated person, and consolidated for distribution. This exercise usually required hours to complete.We now have the ability to search the database for any number of predetermined options, including but not limited to date range, style number, purchase order number and / or auditor and retrieve the expected data in only minutes. Selected reports are also now available for analysis in a matter of minutes.We developed the system to allow us to measure each supplier’s weekly, monthly and year to date performance. But another terrific advantage of the system is each supplier can log on with a unique username and password and can view their performance for any given time period as well. As other organizations within the company discover the benefits of CQATS, they too, are inquiring who developed the system and how can they incorporate it into their respective operations.Many thanks go to Ed Lyons and the staff of Lyons Information Systems, Inc.® for being attentive to our needs and developing a tool that has revolutionized our efforts at measuring quality performance. The value of CQATS to my department and the division is immeasurable.

Reuben White

Director, Quality AssuranceCintas Corporation 

In the business world, maintaining a competitive advantage is often linked to knowing when the business environment changes or a competitor’s position changes in the marketplace. Competitive advantage is often linked to a company’s ability to globally gather and strategically manage business information. Companies gain a competitive edge in decision-making and responsiveness capabilities by effectively integrating Manufacturers & Suppliers Quality Audit data from across the enterprise.

A centralized repository of real-time quality inspection and audit information provides a company and their suppliers with an enhanced capability to monitor and respond to the business marketplace. The solution provides quick visibility of information along with timely access to accurate and easy to understand business data.

LQATS is a robust, flexible, web-based solution that gathers, analyzes and displays quality audit results generated by staff and suppliers of a manufacturing organization. LQATS offers a global quality system solution for the apparel industry. Staff and suppliers are empowered to create, manage, and report audit information in a secure data environment. LQATS gathers real time quality audit information from suppliers (shipment audits), company auditors (final and pre-production audits), distribution centers and manufacturing plant sites located around the world.

Reviewing current quality performance across different business lines quickly and easily is paramount to knowing if there are problems, and if so the degree of the problem. Through the LQATS reporting flexibility and graphical representation of data, managers know the quality performance status of any business line in seconds instead of days.

Lyons Quality Audit Tracking System (LQATS) improves your competitive edge by providing real-time product quality performance visibility across your global enterprise. Product quality problems are quickly identified along the production process, suppliers are immediately notified of non-conformance events, and management has the capability to view the global quality performance of their business enterprise. The improved focus leads to increased profits from the power derived by LQATS.

LQATS offers a powerful, easily managed, and affordable solution to product quality audit information tracking and reporting using objective measurement-to-specification comparisons for product compliance quality determinations. LYONS’ web-based solution offers unique flexibility to meet your business requirements as opposed to systems that must be “configured” to a fairly rigid, inflexible design model. LQATS is streamline to afford easy enhancements, deployment, and usability built upon industry standard technologies that are currently popular and non-proprietary. In short, LQATS is a quality system that users “grow into” rather than “out of”.

Simple to Use
A combination of dynamic graphics, drop down lists, data grids, and data validation rules makes entering and editing information simple and intuitive. Appropriate users may choose what is shown and available for selection to auditors such that nothing is “hard coded” and unable to be changed. This is not a trivial feature, and one that has gained much praise by our customers.

Remote Reach
Suppliers and “outside” manufacturing plant sites may enter audits for products to be shipped using LQATS from their individual site locations. Remote users are also free to view their own quality product performance reports and view past audits. With a PC, an internet connection, Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (or above) software, and access to LQATS, users may perform many product quality related tasks worldwide. Our systems have even been tested using dial-up modem internet access from plant sites in Bangladesh, and Taiwan without connection or performance problems. 

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