Levinson Productivity Systems, P.C. is a Certified Stochos Partner and, as such, is authorized to promote and to present Licensed Programs in the State of Pennsylvania.

1. Levinson Productivity Systems is professionally obligated to disclose to its clients and prospective clients that it receives a commission on sales leads for Stochos products. Clients are encouraged to select the software package that best meets their needs, and links to other vendors are provided in the Resources directory.
2. The representations on these pages are accurate to the best of this company's knowledge. It is this company's opinion that, in general, Stochos' products are powerful and effective instruments for implementing and managing a first-rate quality management system ("ISO 9000 in a Box"), improving quality and productivity, and managing production. Only Stochos can, however, provide specific advice regarding the suitability of its products for your specific application.

QMDS has all the major tools you need to implement and maintain an ISO 9000-compliant quality management system (QMS). It error-proofs many activities such as document control, gage calibration, and preventive maintenance.

Information from http://www.stochos.com/quality_action_reporting.htm, 8 November 2002

"The QAR incorporates all types of  Quality issues (Customer, Vendor, In-Process, Safety, Quality Audit, etc.) into a closed-loop system that requires action from all appropriate personnel."
"The QAR tracks the following steps; Initiation, Notification to the Responsible Party, Disposition of Materials, Disposition Sign-off, Root Cause Analysis, Corrective Action Definition and Sign-off, and Verification of Corrective Action Effectiveness."
Specific benefits:
• Issues cannot "fall between the cracks."
• Information sharing between management and the shop floor
• Elimination of paperwork

Proactive Process Improvement (PPI) is best described as nonparametric (i.e. it doesn't depend on a statistical regression or ANOVA model) and automated evolutionary optimization (EVOP).

PPI differs from Design of Experiments (DOE) in that DOE is an offline technique. In other words, you can rarely perform DOE on product that you intend to ship to your customers because the experimental conditions might be outside the normal specifications. Differences in factor levels (e.g. in a factorial or fractional factorial design) must often be substantial to identify key design variables, and such differences are often unacceptable in a running process.

There is an important tie-in here to Goldratt's Theory of Constraints (TOC).

PPI is an online technique that can be used while the process is running, and without interfering with its normal operation. It makes gradual and incremental changes in the process that, while remaining within specification, drive the process toward an optimum.