Q-Pulse Quality Management Software

In today’s tough economic times, only those organizations that continually search for ways to cut costs and become more competitive with higher quality will succeed. When properly implemented, your Quality Management System can help you achieve those goals.

Unfortunately, many companies view compliance with their quality system as a “necessary evil” that offers little or no value to the organization. Most systems are deployed in an inefficient and ineffective manner, using a variety of paper records, spreadsheets and internal databases that produce volumes of paper and disconnected data. The time, effort and resources required to administer audits undermines the value of auditing. Only a fraction of non-conformances are actually reported.

With Q-Pulse software, you can turn your Quality Management System into a robust system that drives quality improvement AND reduces the time, money and effort it takes to maintain compliance. Q-Pulse is a Windows-based, comprehensive software system that manages all compliance needs across your entire organization in one integrated package. It can be utilized to support and manage any ISO standard. Developed by Gael Quality, Q-Pulse is used by over 100,000 users world-wide.

Specifically, Q-Pulse provides solutions to common quality system problems:

• Provides a single storage place for all documentation
• Automatically alerts appropriate personnel when they need to take action and records when tasks are completed.
• Automatically sends out reminders to appropriate personnel when due dates are approaching or past.
• Can escalate critical customer issues or other actions automatically.
• Includes analysis tools to help identify root causes and related problems
• Assigns appropriate access to users to view only, modify or approve documentation

The interface components provide users with real time information and ease of use while the individual modules address specific quality system requirements.

Our Q-Pulse certified trainer will work with your team to customize the system to accommodate existing business processes and end user roles. This ensures that the system truly reflects your quality system.

The consultant and Gael’s outstanding technical support team will use the following process to implement Q-Pulse quickly and effectively:

1. Develop an understanding of the strategic objectives of your compliance automation project; define your technical, functional and reporting requirements; and obtain agreement on these objectives and requirements.
2. Install the software onto your chosen server environment.
3. Import your user groups and end user details from Active Directory and configure key areas in the software to match your organizational requirements.
4. Modify Q-Pulse terminology to match the language of your management system. Define document approval workflows.
5. Train the Q-Pulse internal support team on system administration, maintenance and ongoing support. Train the users on the functionality of Q-Pulse that supports the company’s strategic objectives.
6. Reinforce knowledge gained during on-site training through the Gael Q-Pulse Academy, online training service. Access to the website for two months is provided at no cost once implementation services are rendered.

Download Q-Pulse Technical Specifications for complete information on the system architecture. Click here to read more about Gael Quality Systems, the creator of Q-Pulse

Benefits

Q-Pulse will help your organization to:

• Encourage ownership of the compliance management system across the organization
• Improve your processes and quality through employee engagement, learning and effective corrective action resolution
• Decrease the amount of administrative effort associated with the Document Control process
• Analyze incidents of risk by occurrence and cost to address issues at a departmental, site, division or company wide level
• Address incidents of risk faster by analyzing real time data
• Reduce response time to audit findings by streamlining audit planning and tracking activities
• Easily demonstrate compliance status to customers and regulatory bodies and develop a culture of continuous improvement throughout your organization

To learn more about the capabilities of Q-Pulse, read the detailed descriptions of each of the 10 modules and the interface components of the system.

Q Pulse Interface Components

LaunchPad

The Launchpad is the primary portal into the system and allows for easy access to the Q-Pulse modules.

Workload

The Q-Pulse Workload user interface is clear, intuitive and easy to use. It interacts with all modules and offers one window which highlights changes to, and actions from, the management system. It provides users with a quick view of outstanding and overdue actions, allowing direct access to the appropriate record or action.

The Workload module also provides reports to indicate what actions have been completed by individuals, teams, departments and across the whole organization during the previous week, month, quarter etc.

Messaging

The messaging system integrates with your desktop e-mail system to deliver automatic notification and reminders of pending actions. The messaging system can be configured to escalate actions to management when actions are not completed in a timely manner.

Mind Genius

Mind Genius is an integrated business mapping tool that can also be used for business planning and determining organizational objectives. Use it to identify and manage the changes required to people, skills, processes, equipment, materials and management controls to achieve objectives. (Access to Mind Genius is available for two months at no cost once implementation services are rendered.)

Q Pulse Modules

Q-Pulse provides a central storage area for all controlled documents and associated records. Documents are securely managed within Q-Pulse to prevent the use of uncontrolled draft or achieved documents and records.

Records pertaining to document change, history, approval and distribution are securely held for each revision of a document and are readily available for review. Document registers are automatically updated with approved changes, helping to eliminate the risk of human error.

Auditing

Q-Pulse provides the ability to check the proposed audit plan for completeness and availability of auditors before finalizing schedules. It automatically updates the audit calendar throughout the audit process. Past audit reports CA/PA findings are available for review. Audit checklists and other needed audit references can be stored for use within each audit record.

Positive findings and opportunities for improvement are included, individual records created for each finding and the audit report agreed, formalized and tracked to conclusion by Q-Pulse.

Q-Pulse continually monitors the status of each audit action from initiation until closure and ensures the audit is properly managed and necessary actions are not overlooked.

Corrective and Preventive Action Management

This module tracks non-conformances and performs real time root cause analysis of your data, helping your organization prevent re-occurrences. It automatically sends out e-mail notification of all non-conformances to assigned personnel for each step of the incident until completion. You can also track the cost of quality and response time for each non-conformance.

Asset Management

The Asset Management module has been designed to help managers effectively plan ahead for maintenance, calibrations or safety tests. A historical record is available for each piece of equipment that can be used for analysis, or adjust the service intervals, if necessary.

Customer Management

Customer Feedback positive or negative, is valuable. Q-Pulse keeps records of all customers who have made a complaint or positive comment about the product or service they have purchased or experienced. The information can be viewed and analyzed and the response time monitored by Q-Pulse. Complaints that are not being addressed in a timely fashion can be automatically escalated for action.

Supplier Management

Q-Pulse allows for the collection of supplier information and historical performance in terms of delivery, failures, warranty claims, returns, complaints, audits and reviews.

A supplier registrar shows those suppliers under consideration, those that are approved, and those who have not been approved. Purchasing can access this information to insure that only approved suppliers are used, thus avoiding costly errors.

Analysis Module

The function of the Analysis module is to help organizations identify opportunities for improvement. It provides extensive graphical grouping, trend reports and drill down capability to identify systemic issues plaguing the Quality Management System. Data is easily extracted and effectively presented from tailored queries supporting the requirements of the management review.

It is also an effective tool to demonstrate to your customers, suppliers and auditors that you are serious about continuous improvement and more importantly, are meeting or exceeding customer needs.

Training & Competence

Demonstrating employee competence and capability has always been a challenge. The Q-Pulse Training and Competence module provides records of each employee’s training and updated training plans. You can also use this module to quickly identify future training events so that production plans and/or staffing changes can be planned.

Concurrently, when a document is revised, Q-Pulse identifies those individuals who will be impacted by this change and e-mails the appropriate manager, signifying that an updated training event is needed. Such events are tracked through to conclusion, preventing problems associated with outdated instructions and ensuring that required training is completed.

People

In addition to a list of employees, Q-Pulse is also capable of tracking Supplier and Customer contacts. Any contact can be assigned a Q-Pulse log-in. This can be beneficial when working with contacts outside the organization - such as resolving customer or supplier corrective actions.

Administration

The Administration module allows for all the customization within Q-Pulse. These areas include:

• Setting up users, permissions and security settings
• Design Reports
• E-mail reminders and escalation alerts
• Document numbering preferences