Engagement snapshot
- Mandate
- Make the quality stack operable and auditable without forcing a full platform replacement.
- Timeline
- 11 weeks from current-state analysis to governance design.
- Team shape
- Quality director, manufacturing systems lead, 2 solution architects, and 4 quality managers.
The problem
Quality events moved across multiple systems without a clear system of record, causing traceability gaps and duplicate effort.
What we built
Mapped system responsibilities, redesigned handoffs, and set governance rules for change control, non-conformance tracking, and document ownership.
Operating context
The manufacturer had capable systems but weak alignment between them. Quality and operations teams often had to reconstruct what happened across PLM, MES, and QMS when incidents or audits occurred.
Key constraints
- The client wanted better traceability without a high-risk ERP-scale transformation.
- Change-control and non-conformance workflows had to respect both plant and corporate quality needs.
- Any target state had to remain understandable to plant-level users.
What we built
System-of-record redesign
Clarified where quality events, documents, and approvals should originate and where they should only be referenced.
Handoff contract mapping
Defined how events moved between PLM, MES, QMS, and CAPA without losing traceability.
Governance and change cadence
Created ownership, review, and deprecation rules so the stack would remain coherent over time.
Delivery path
Traceability audit
Mapped incident and audit workflows to expose where system boundaries were creating confusion.
Target-state blueprint
Designed a cleaner responsibility model for quality data and workflow ownership.
Implementation guide
Provided sequencing and governance changes the client could execute without large-scale disruption.
Why it mattered
The systems map reduced quality friction because teams no longer had to guess which tool mattered for which step. Better handoffs improved traceability and lowered the scramble during audits and incident review.
Implementation notes
- Quality stack problems are often responsibility problems disguised as integration problems.
- Traceability improves when duplication is reduced, not when more systems are connected blindly.
- Plant-level usability matters in governance design or the model will drift back into workarounds.