When you bring together 40 customers and ETQers, great things are bound to happen. And the recent ETQ EU Summit didn’t disappoint. Not only did the attendees hear about the latest developments and company direction, they were able to network and learn from their peers to bolster their own knowledge and ensure their organization is optimizing ETQ Reliance.
Attendees included a great mix of Quality Management and IT professionals from a wide variety of industries.
A number of attendees also leverage other Hexagon products. With ETQ being a part of the Hexagon family, we bring a total quality perspective to an organization, supporting end-to-end quality control, quality assurance and quality management.
The first day focused on end-user training. ETQ offers a variety of training options, including webcasts and online courses, but at times, there is more value realized in a real classroom setting, surrounded by other learners hearing from ETQ Reliance experts. Shil Sanu, ETQ Principal Consultant, led the training, supported by Tom Barlow and Christophe Trinquet of the ETQ Solutions Engineering team. Learning how to get the most out of ETQ Reliance QMS enhances the investment our customers have made in the solution and ensures they are leading with best in class quality initiatives.
The second day was filled with sessions focused on the product roadmap, enhanced solutions, and customer panels.
John Taylor, ETQ Chief Technology Officer, and David Isaacson, VP, Product Marketing early morning session covered the ETQ Reliance product roadmap.
David covered the recently introduced ETQ Reliance Connected Worker Solution. He highlighted a number of challenges facing manufacturers today, such as loss of knowledge through personnel leaving the work force and the difficulty in hiring and onboarding new employees. David also discussed how the solution helps address these issues.
John spoke about AI and analytics. AI has certainly become a hot topic for all organizations and since AI is growing rapidly, it’s important to understand the best use cases for quality management – as well as the limitations of the AI technology. John validated that ETQ is focused on making sure that our solutions focus on the areas where our customers will see the most value. There are enhancements planned for ETQ Reliance around data management, analytics and AI/ML. Stay tuned for more information from ETQ on this important topic.
As much as the attendees received value from the product sessions, they also benefitted from each other during the customer sessions:
A customer panel featuring Bal Badial, Director QMS Delivery Lead at Organon, Mina Gavrilova, Sr. Quality Manager – Global Quality at Huvepharma, and Rene Flores, North American Quality System Engineer at Safran all highlighted their organization’s quality journeys.
Huvepharma, focused on Human and Veterinary medicine, started their quality journey with ETQ in 2016 and has experienced a strong, recent expansion in their use of ETQ Reliance. Their initial implementation included a set of apps for change management, quality events, and CAPAs. This approach of starting with a few apps and then expanding over time is a great way to ensure success. In addition to expanding their global footprint, Huvepharma is now also using Doc Control, Complaints Management, Training Management and Assets, Calibration & Maintenance and has further expansion planned over the next few years. Mina highlighted a number of lessons learned, including how to ensure compliance at all sites with appropriate KPIs and keeping configurations to a minimum to ensure simplicity and ease of use for all users. She noted a number of benefits, but the one that stood out was:
“The more robust our quality management system is, the higher quality products we can produce, MORE CUSTOMERS will be attracted, and MORE REVENUE will be earned.”
Safran, an aerospace manufacturing company with 83,000 employees in 27 countries, began their quality journey with ETQ in 2016. A few of the criteria for choosing ETQ Reliance was its flexibility to meet ever-changing requirements, concurrent user licensing, and the strength of ETQ support and maintenance organization. As of June 2024, Safran has rolled out 11 applications to thousands of employees around the world. And they aren’t done yet, as they are developing new applications as well as expanding use of existing apps. One key area of focus that Rene of Safran mentioned is integrating suppliers into Audits Management.
Organon, a global life sciences company focused on women’s health, has been on their quality journey with ETQ since 2021, when they spun out of Merck. They currently leverage a broad set of apps, including Audits, CAPAs, Supplier Corrective Actions, and Analytics, in addition to a few they have created internally. Today, they integrate their ETQ Reliance instance with their ERP to ensure a single source of truth for documents, suppliers and other information. Organon has a robust expansion plan, with several new apps planned for the next couple of years. Bal mentioned that they started with a vision statement for quality management which has guided them in their journey. She also discussed a number of key learnings, such as the need to simplify, enhance, and document your business requirements in order to understand where your data is coming from, and the need to keep an “out of the box” mindset (try not to overly complicate the system or your processes).
Michael Farrell, Manager, IT at Illumina, along with ETQ’s Shil and Christophe, discussed supplier quality. These days, when the supply chain can provide up to 75 or 80% of the value of a manufacturer’s product, managing supplier quality is mandatory. Managing the ongoing costs can mean the difference between profit and loss, and mitigating risk. At Illumina, they leverage ETQ Reliance to facilitate direct collaboration with suppliers. This includes a supplier portal, working together on corrective actions, and supplier audits. This approach has improved communications, allowed real-time monitoring of supplier performance, and access to a single audit trail to ensure compliance. Michael discussed how they measure suppliers through a performance scorecard with key metrics such as negative trend analysis, first pass yield, and CAPA performance.
In addition to hearing from each other and ETQ, attendees had plenty of opportunity to network, renew friendships and get new ideas for driving quality throughout their organizations. The feedback was that the summit was exactly what our European customers wanted, and everyone is looking forward to the next time we can get everyone together.
