Blogs & Articles

A Whole New Level of Collaboration

 

The need for a single source of truth (SSOT) within your company isn’t groundbreaking news, but the ability to share one record between companies is. Not only do you need a centralized and irrefutable record of all your information, data, communications and agreements, but you need the ability to share that information with your outsourced manufacturing partners. 

 

A Shared Single Source of Truth doesn’t belong on the Nice-to-Have List – it is a requirement for the modern supply web.

 

Intra-Company vs. Inter-Company

 

Traditionally, the SSOT has been an internal, or intra-company resource. This means that your company has access to a central repository of information, which benefits company alignment and efficiency. In many organizations, this takes the form of a project management tool or public drive containing countless spreadsheets, documents and logs. Training and standard operating procedures are required to ensure that every member of your company keeps the information properly logged and up to date. 

 

Having a collaborative or inter-company Shared SSOT means that you and your outsourced manufacturing partners both access, contribute and refer to the same set of information housed within one central system. This requires a collaborative tool with portals for both (or all) companies in which a singular set of information is synchronized and continually up-to-date. Having a Shared SSOT means your companies can stay in agreement throughout complex manufacturing projects, save time and money by eliminating repetitive data entry and opportunities for miscommunication and ultimately build valued and trusted relationships. 

 

Always in Agreement

 

Maintaining a Shared SSOT creates a record of agreements between companies. Proactively establishing clear expectations is integral to successful outsourced manufacturing relationships and producing good quality products. A Shared SSOT provides a record of every agreement between companies that each must verify and comply with. With a Shared SSOT, if a deadline is missed or part is non-conformant, it is simple to refer to your collaborative agreement and deduce the root cause of a problem. Quality management is also made simpler with a Shared SSOT by creating a standardized set of data management procedures. For manufacturers, this simplifies the processes of quality control and non-conformance reporting as well as ISO certifications and audits. 

 

Shared SSOTs ensure that you and all of your outsourced manufacturing are always in agreement on:

 

• Data management procedures
• Part Specifications 
• Revisions
• Order Details
• Pricing
• Shipping and Delivery Dates
• Quality Control 

 

Simple, Secure and Standardized Data 

 

Constant data replication is not only tedious and time consuming, but exposes your information to opportunities for error. The need for repetitive data entry and reconciliation is drastically reduced with a Shared SSOT.

 

The data journey with an internal SSOT involves numerous replication points. As a manufacturer, your engineer will create a part and log its details in a spreadsheet. Those part details will be copied into your purchase order log, and further again copied into your invoice log and shipping log. All of the information would be identical, however manual intervention is required to move it from one log and department to another. Upon order, your vendor would receive your information and replicate the part details into a production log and shipping log; their own, separate internal single source of truth. 

 

With a Shared Single Source of Truth, the part details would be inputted once at the creation of an RFQ or order. The same information would be automatically accessible in the parts’ record and carried forward across every stage or pre-production, production and logistics for every company involved. This practice can be applied to every detail of your parts, orders, revisions, quotes, invoices, contact information, shipping and billing. Information only has to be entered once for it to be accessible by every department in each company. Furthermore, any changes are automatically updated system-wide. Manual intervention is decreased immensely, saving time, money, and data risks.

 

Collaborative Certainty Builds Trust

 

Collaborating with your outsourced manufacturing partners to ensure you all have clarity and agreement on every aspect of every product and order gives you confidence. Having confidence in your supply web relieves stress from your team and creates trust between companies. A trusted relationship is invaluable in the world of supply web management and will save you time and money on trial-and-error sourcing, management and set-up costs. 

 

If you can trust in your information, and trust your suppliers, then you can trust that your products will be top quality every time. 

 

The time savings, reduction in margin of error and confidence provided by having a Shared Single Source of Truth cannot be overlooked. It isn’t a question of whether or not you need a Shared SSOT, but when you need it; and the answer is yesterday. 

Start a free trial and experience the supply web in action.

Author

Christina Lionello

Marketing & Communications Specialist at Omnae

Have you ever received a shipment of product with an error that renders the whole order a loss? How many hours or days did you waste trying to find the source of the problem and negotiate a replacement? More importantly, what was the cost of this error to your bottomline?

Outsource manufacturing means putting trust in your vendors. Hoping your products arrive exactly as you need them is often exactly that: hoping. Having a good quality management system (QMS) not only affects your company’s output, but also how willing your customers are to trust your brand and buy your products. 

 

Often, problems occur due to a miscommunication of design requirements  that could be avoided by implementing some simple rules of thumb.

 

Here are 5 industrial design tips to help you eliminate finger crossing and take control over the quality of your order from the very beginning. 

1. Stay Consistent and Standardized

 

Choosing a consistent unit of measurement to use throughout your designs is essential. Unnecessary opportunities for miscalculation and costs arises when a factory has to convert your measurements or tooling into its native unit. 

 

Use universal standard units of measurement wherever possible. The metric system is used by most global manufacturers. Utilizing ISO, ANSI, or MIL-SPEC standard processes and measurements can eliminate opportunities for ambiguous interpretations. Stay consistent and standard wherever possible.

 

2. Spec Everything 

 

When we say specify everything, we mean it. Any unspecified elements of your designs are left to the imagination of your factories. Each and every surface, edge, tolerance, material and treatment must be clearly labeled. 

 

Pay special attention to coatings and edges. If you do not specify a coating, the factory will choose a standard coat. What you expect to be bare metal components may arrive with an unwelcome powder coat. Any edges that have not been labeled for deburring could arrive sharp enough to puncture an inspection glove. Leave no stone unturned.

 

3. Check for Tolerance Stacks 

 

Tolerance stacks are a complex study of their own. However, you can ensure the quality of a component by keeping the end product in mind. When building an assembly, every component has to fit together and have clear +/- specifications. Make sure every component is prototyped, fitted and tested against the final product assembly before you place an order.

 

4. Keep it Simple

 

Keep your material process in mind in the design phase.  Whether its a multi-component assembly or standalone part you will save time, money and margin of error by keeping your designs as simple as possible.

 

Think from a machining perspective: how many moves or steps are required to make your product?

 

For example, in a machined metal component rounded corners require a single drill or sweep to cut or form, where hard corners require the machines to shift and pivot to create an angled cut or corner. For machined products, if an angled corner is not essential to the function or aesthetic of your product, you may want to consider making it round to reduce the risk of errors.

 

5. Change the Way you Think About Quality Management

 

Quality management and QMS’s are traditionally viewed as end-of-run procedures and processes. Checking for the quality of a product after it has been made is essential, but viewing quality management as an end-to-end process creates greater product success. It is time to implement best quality practices throughout every stage of manufacturing, starting from the designs. Achieving transparency, clarity, understanding and trust throughout your communications and relationships with your vendors will create better products and a better future for your supply chain and outsourced manufacturing.

 

Quality from Beginning to End

There are several simple steps you can take in the design process to set your products up for success. End-to-end quality management systems will take hoping out of quality management and give your company certainty that will save you time, money and frustrating non-conformance analyses. 

Start a free trial and experience the supply web in action.

Author

Christina Lionello

Marketing and Communications Specialist at Omnae

Cross-border outsourced manufacturing has changed forever. 

Irrevocable (but far from settled-down…) changes in the world trade system have replaced the trade world our processes and policies were accustomed to. Systemic uncertainty defines the foreseeable future, and there’s no longer any normal to go back to. 

The world we now live in is a world of partial, shifting, collapsing, unreliable, or no trade agreements, not the free-access world we based our supply chains on.

Supply chain survival today means continuous adaption and the ability to change very quickly.

How will you — as a manufacturer or a vendor — be able to continuously adapt and survive?

How can the supply chains you rely on become resilient enough to ensure you can keep making and selling, and stay in business?

What are the “new normal” risks affecting your supply chains, logistics, and ability to sell?

Here are some of the ones wreaking havoc:

• Supply-chain destroying trade wars without a clear exit-ramp: US vs China, US vs Europe, Japan vs. Korea
• Unpredictable & retaliatory tariffs & counter-escalations
• World Trade Organization adjudication of disputes is immobilized indefinitely by lack of the Appellate Body’s quorum

• “New trade deals” are of little help

• Deals like EU+Mercosur are brittle and on-again off-again. Deals like CETA, remain not fully implemented long after their “conclusion”
• Multiple parliaments must approve deals (e.g.  Wallonia vs the Canada-EU CETA)
  
  

Furthermore, new types of issues that didn’t previously enter into trade negotiations are challenges to new agreements, including:

• Data protection and privacy
• De-carbonization & environmental requirements
• New security restrictions due to geopolitical conflicts
  
  

Even with new trade deals, non-tariff barriers and Rules of Origin (ROOs) present big challenges to supply chains as they change:

•  “Temporary” tariffs hanging on indefinitely even after the supposed conclusion of trade agreements
• Brexit isn’t “done” since the trade outcome is still completely unpredictable — and the ripple effects of Brexit extend far beyond just the UK and EU.
• Markets and supply chains lost to trade conflicts are often lost for good, never to be regained.
  
  

Are there any winners?

There are some “winners” (for now) from the trade wars: Việt Nam, Malaysia, and, in some areas, Taiwan. 

For them, the challenge is not how to recover lost business in a rapidly changing world, but how to consolidate gains and hold on to their new customers as the trade system continues to be torn apart.

How at-risk is my supply chain?

If you’re in one of the following businesses, very:

• Consumer electronics

• Medical equipment
• Telecommunications equipment
• Semiconductors and semiconductor-manufacturing equipment
• PCBs and PCB-making equipment
• Aviation
• Automotive, motorcycles, bicycles, auto parts
• Computer and data storage equipment
• Toys
• Solar panels and other greentech
• Agricultural products and food
• Home appliances
• Clothing, shoes, luggage, and textiles
  
  

What’s the solution?

The solution is a new kind of thinking about how you can keep making, selling, and stay in business — the concept of a dynamic and adaptive supply web instead of a supply chain.

Like the Internet, the supply web is always growing and has the ability to “route around the damage”.

How do I achieve this?

You need a dynamic platform that constantly accumulates knowledge about vendors, suppliers, performance history, delivery, and quality into a many-to-many persistent model of the world manufacturing system. 

You need a platform that lets you, as a manufacturer, find new vendors at the drop of a hat to respond to changing trade conditions. Or lets you, as a vendor, quickly find new customers for your capabilities when geopolitics destroys your old customer relationships.

You need Omnae.

Next Steps

Future blog posts in this series will focus on specific trade risks and solutions for the businesses and countries touched on above.

In the meantime, book a Demo or Start a Free Trial and experience the supply web in action.

Author

Joe Bosurgi

Vice President of Sales

at Omnae

Becoming ISO certified is essential to your business function and credibility. However, the current process to achieve and maintain certification requires the creation, implementation and continuous management of numerous complex procedures. Your company can save countless man hours by using Omnae as the foundation for your own ISO certification.

 

Quality Management Re-Imagined

 

Above all else, Omnae is a re-imagined Quality Management System. It takes what have traditionally been in house, closed, manual processes out of their siloes. In the Omnae system, quality management lives in a collaborative middle ground between organizations. In effect, organizations participating in the Omnae system become a part of one large, overarching QMS that drives a unified mission of continuous improvement throughout the global supply web.

Setting up Your ISO System with Omnae 

 

Typically, when setting up your ISO system, you have to create all the logs, documentation and standard operating procedures to track, manage and report on quality and non-conformances. Further, you must train each of your employees on the specific protocols and ensure that each step is being followed for each order, part and NCR/SCAR.

 

All of the data tracking, management and reporting tools, rules and SOPs you require to certify your outsourced manufacturing processes exist within the Omnae system. This eliminates redundant data entry, documents and spreadsheets that take up time and increase the margin for error.

 

Within Omnae, best practice procedures and data logging are part of the integrated workflows. Through vendor sourcing, request for quote, design review, revisions, proofing, first articling, ordering, production, and logistics every step is ISO compliant, mapped and forced in the system. Compliance training is now reduced to learning the user-friendly Omnae interface, instead of a binder full of steps and rules.  

 

Share a Single Source of Truth

 

Once you create a part, order, profile or non-conformance report the information is recorded and persisted system-wide. This eliminates the need for you and your manufacturing partners to replicate data entry across multiple tools and companies.

 

You and your customers or vendors will be working off of the same information at all times. This collaborative single source of truth allows you to trust that your data is up-to-date and correct throughout pre-production, production, delivery and NCR cycles.

 

Your team will save time on forensic NCR root cause investigations. All specifications, prices, batch sizes, and delivery details and dates for an order are proactively and irrefutably agreed upon and recorded in the system for all parties involved in production. 

 

Simplified Audits

 

Omnae has successfully compiled as the backbone of two ISO audit cycles, and is designed to be continually compliant over time. This drastically reduces the time required to undergo your annual audits. Instead of compiling reports and documentation, your auditor can reference your Omnae account as the source of all your data and workflows. 

 

Stress-Free Compliance

 

Omnae is in and of itself a quality management system designed to be hands-off, integrated and seamless. Managing and reporting your data is easy. By using the Omnae system, the time and stress required to set up and maintain the myriad of ISO requirements is dramatically reduced. 

Start a free trial and experience the supply web in action.

Author

Christina Lionello

Marketing and Communications Specialist at Omnae