Identifying the Quality Inspection Business Problem and Solution

Inspection generally refers to the activity of checking products. Quality Inspection Collaboration is a collaborative business process that supports inspection at the Supplier's facility. Historically, addressing quality inspection presented the following problems:

• Suppliers submitted paper copies of inspection results, and a Quality Analyst at the Buyer/Customer site would manually transcribe the result into their system.
• Sometimes the quality inspection results provided by the Supplier did not meet the quality specifications of the Buyer.
• The process time required for manual quality inspection caused delays and the potential release of stock to unrestricted stock before the quality inspection process completed.
• If communication between Buyers and Suppliers is done via e-mail, it has to be transcribed into the quality system, which is inefficient and ineffective in supporting the end-to-end process.

• The Buyer has the ability to request Quality Inspection results from the Supplier/Subcontractor.
• The Supplier has the ability to:
  • Send inspection results for the Inspection Lot.
  • Send a Certificate of Analysis (CoA) as an attachment along with the inspection results.
• The Buyer has the ability to confirm (or lock) the inspection results at the characteristics level.
• The Buyer has the ability to share the final Usage Decision/Inspection Status with the Supplier.
• E-mail notifications can be sent to Buyers and Suppliers in the case of Inspection Request, Result, Review, or Usage Decision.
• Document flow and traceability is improved. Purchase Orders and Quality Inspection documents are linked, allowing the Supplier to easily navigate between documents.
• Ensures end-to-end integration with the SAP Quality Management module.

For an overview of the Quality Inspection Collaboration, watch this video.