SAP QM Quality Notifications

The SAP System features a central notification system that helps you record and process various types of inquiries or problems. You can resolve these problems quickly and easily by defining tasks and assigning them to individuals who will be responsible for implementing them. In addition to recording and processing these problems, another important objective is to determine where defects are likely to occur. The integration of the SAP Business Workflow allows you to optimize the processing activities and reduce processing times.The SAP System features a central notification system that helps you record and process various types of inquiries or problems. You can resolve these problems quickly and easily by defining tasks and assigning them to individuals who will be responsible for implementing them. In addition to recording and processing these problems, another important objective is to determine where defects are likely to occur. The integration of the SAP Business Workflow allows you to optimize the processing activities and reduce processing times.

Continuous Process Improvement

The QM Quality notifications can help you and your company fulfill the requirement for continuous process improvement. In a quality notification, you can record quality-related problems, document defects and causes confirmed by a defect analysis, define necessary corrective actions to improve the quality, and monitor the effectiveness of these actions.

Quality Notifications in the Logistics Chain

Delivery Complaints

You can record the problems found in a goods receipt inspection or in the subsequent processing stages of production by creating a notification for a complaint against the vendor. When you process a notification, for example, you can create a letter of complaint or an 8D report, activate additional goods receipt inspections or trigger a return delivery process. The complaint against a vendor also serves as the basis for determining a complaint score that is used to evaluate a vendor in the systems vendor evaluation.

Improved Quality through effective Problem Solving

Complaints in Production

If you confirm defects in an inspection during production, if the action limits in a control chart are exceeded, or if qualitative characteristics are valuated as not OK, you can also record and monitor these events in a quality notification.

Customer Complaints

If a customer is not satisfied with the goods received in a delivery, you can record the complaint, inspect the returned goods, analyze the defects and specify the necessary corrective actions to be taken. You can perform all of these steps using the functions of the quality notifications.

Defects Recording

In defects recording, you can record the defects confirmed in a quality inspection quickly and easily. These defects are documented and stored as quality notifications in the system.

Elements of the Quality Notification System

Nonconformity Costs

You can use QM orders to record, settle and evaluate the nonconformity costs incurred while processing a notification problem.

Status Management

Using the system’s status management function, you can display the current processing status of a quality notification or task at any time. You can also evaluate any existing notifications and tasks based on these statuses.

Action Log

All changes that are made in a notification are documented in the system by change documents. The action log provides an overview of all changes and processing steps in chronological order.

Action Box

Action Box With the help of the action box, you can define follow-up functions that an authorized person can execute while processing a notification. The action box can be customized to enhance the notification’s range of functions and simplify the problem processing activities, and it allows you to solve problems in a logical sequence.

Document Flow

The document flow provides an overview of all notification-related documents. It allows you to identify all originating and subsequent documents that relate to a notification.

Notification Structure

A quality notification contains the following elements:

 

• Notification header: The notification header contains a description of the problem, various reference objects (for example, material or batch), information relating to complaint quantities and nonconforming quantities, as well as scheduling dates and status information.
• Notification items: A notification item pinpoints a problem in coded form (for example, a defect type and defect location) and provides the basis for evaluating the notification data
• Causes: A cause specifies a reason or event that caused a problem to occur and also identifies the problem to be solved.
• Tasks: A task defines the necessary corrective action(s), responsible organizational units, and processing deadlines for a notification problem.
• Activity: An activity documents any actions that were carried out in the course of processing a notification problem
• Partner: A partner is any internal and external person or organizational unit that is directly or indirectly involved with the notification problem.

Flexible Worklists

Using worklists, you can select and process notifications or tasks on the basis of various selection criteria. Monitoring functions in the worklist show you the processing status of all selected objects.

Evaluations

The access to central defect and cause catalogs allows you to analyze your quality data on a company-wide basis in the QM Information System (QMIS) and Business Information Warehouse (BW). These tools enable you to flexibly select and summarize the data, and display it graphically. An Early Warning System allows you to automate the search for unusual trends in results and helps recognize potential problems early

New Technologies

• Notifications on the Internet In the age of electronic commerce, the Internet offers you a wide range of options for direct communication between customer and vendor. On the Internet, your customer can record quality notifications quickly and easily. This also allows you to remain in direct contact with a vendor
• Notifications on the Intranet The employees in your company can use the Intranet to record different types of inquires or problems, and forward them for further processing. Supported by the SAP Business Workflow component, the system triggers various internal processes to ensure that the notification is processed promptly.
• Telephone Integration Using the SAPphone component, you can create a quality notification on the basis of an incoming telephone call. Outgoing calls can be dialed directly from the SAP System.
• SAP Business Workflow The SAP Business Workflow is a cross-application tool that allows you to integrate the business tasks across all areas of your company. You can use it to directly notify the departments or persons who are responsible for processing a given task or notification. This ensures that all problems are processed quickly and efficiently.
• SAP ArchiveLink: SAP ArchiveLink is an integrated communication interface between the SAP application components and external electronic archives. You can use this component to archive printed or electronically transmitted documents and link them to a quality notification.
• Solution Database: When you record and process notifications, you can use the solution database to quickly find solutions to previously known problems. You can search the database for specific symptoms and then assign the corresponding solutions to the notification
• Processing Specific Tasks: A person responsible for executing a task in a notification is informed of the impending work via the SAP Business Workflow or the worklist. Using the function for processing tasks, this person can call up the task, perform the necessary activities and document the progress of the work.

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