ARC Releases Quality, Risk, and Compliance Management System Supplier Selection Guide

The guide includes both selection criteria and guided workflow steps to help in choosing a product quality, risk, and compliance management system for your Enterprise Quality Management operations. 

QRC solutions on a complexity continuum span low cost solutions with limits on the depth of functionality provided, to highly functional much higher cost solutions.  Different suppliers have also developed special domain expertise in specific industries.  Other suppliers have targeted specific small industry sub-segments such as blood banks.  Still others have targeted their solutions at small to medium size businesses by offering them through software-as-a-service (SaaS). 

The negative impact that defective, contaminated, or off quality products can have on a business is increasing.  As the number of incidents and the impact of such incidents continue to increase, governments are responding with increased regulatory requirements.  And there is a shift in regulatory response from rapid response and containment of an incident to prevention.  This has created a demand for more in-depth QRC system functionality that includes more real-time monitoring and prediction of potential off quality product that extends throughout the manufacturing supply chain.  Traditional paper records, manual data entry, and historic data analysis is no longer sufficient.  Electronic records, real-time analytics, and more powerful database have become a necessity.

The ARC STAR Supplier Evaluation and Selection Service guides users through a step-by-step process selecting and evaluating suppliers and their products against specific application and industry requirements.  The process guides the user through the project and team definition, reviewing and editing ARC-provided selection criteria and supplier questions, weighing selection criteria, developing a supplier Request for Information (RFI) list, evaluating supplier responses, and developing a final ranking of RFI results.  ARC STAR then fully documents the process and results for management review and approval.  ARC STAR helps ensure inclusive, fact-based, impartial supplier evaluations and selections, free of the user bias issues that typically hamper these activities.  In addition, ARC estimates that ARC STAR can reduce the cost and effort of a supplier selection process by well over 50 percent.

The selection guide was authored by John Blanchard.  John has been covering all aspects of ensuring product quality and manufacturing regulatory compliance in the manufacturing industries for over 30 years.

For more information on the QRC STAR supplier selection guide, please visit www.arcweb.com/services/supplier-selection/pages/quality-risk-compliance.aspx.