Information Systems

Here are some questions an organization should ask about their information system:

• Is your Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP) only used by certain departments or is it a part of everyone’s work life?
• Are employees using it consistently?
• How are new employees being trained?
• Do they understand the system and know why they are doing something?
• Do they complain about the information that they have to work with?
• How much does the data entry cost in time and employees?
• Is it worth it?
• Do your department managers use log books, spreadsheets, databases, hand-made reports and charts?
• Are department managers the owners of the information for their area of responsibility or does accounting and/or the receptionist take care of it for them?
• How do your department heads control costs?
• Do they know what their costs are?
• Do departments use the data to manage and improve or is it “office stuff” that takes up their time?
• Do you hear “I don’t have time to play with a computer! I am trying to get a job out”?
• Can upper management obtain reports that tell them what is going on?
• If shop floor is the single largest group of data entry people, did they receive the least amount of training?
• Do you trust the data from production?
• Does your company make the same mistakes over and over again?
• Do you feel that you have received the full value for your investment in your system?
• Is accurate information important to your operation?

QISS is helping clients use their applications and information systems to manage all areas of their organizations. Their method of bringing Lean Manufacturing techniques and Six Sigma philosophy to programs, ERP implementations and training means that an organization gets the maximum information value, utilized in a collaborative environment, without wasted efforts in data entry or extraction. Concurrently, an organization’s management team learns the value of data based decision making as instructed by programs such as Continuous Improvement Process.

While these techniques can be used with any system’s implementation, QISS has experience implementing EFI’s Monarch, PrintFlow and PSI products in addition to SmartLinc shipping solution.