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, however, can provide specific advice regarding the suitability of its products for your specific application.


Among QMDS's most attractive features is its ability to handle the key aspects of ISO 9000. Hence the description "ISO 9000 in a Box." It can't actually develop the "say what you do" part of ISO 9000 (your quality management system) for you but, once you've developed it, it helps assure that you "do what you say."

• Document control: QMDS helps error-proof one of the three biggest sources (Bakker, 1996) of nonconformances
• Product traceability
• Scheduled preventive maintenance
• Scheduled gage calibration: QMDS should be capable of reducing another of the three biggest nonconformance sources to almost zero.
• Closed loop corrective action: QMDS avoids the lack of follow-through that is a stumbling block in many companies.


Under the Pareto principle, suppression of the three biggest sources of nonconformances should make it far easier not only to achieve and maintain ISO 9000 registration, but also to make ISO 9000 work for you instead of the other way around.

ISO 9000:1994 section	Information from Stochos (brochure or Web site)
4.1 Management Responsibility
4.2 Quality System	QMDS can document your Quality Manual
4.3 Contract Review
4.4. Design Control
4.5 Document Control* * One of the three greatest sources of nonconformances; 4.10 and 4.11 are the others. See Bakker, Robert M. 1996. "Why Companies Fail Quality Audits," Manufacturing Engineering, (News Desk), May 1996)	An advantage of electronic-only documentation is that it is (probably) impossible to have an obsolete document in the work area. Obsolete paper work instructions can be left behind by accident but a computerized document is automatically updated. Note this feature's support for visual aids, but you are still responsible for assuring that visual aids are consistent with the work instructions they support.
4.6 Purchasing
4.7 Control of Customer-Supplied Products
4.8 Product Identification and Traceability	Product traceability capability goes all the down to the raw material level.
4.9 Process Control	Support of scheduled preventive maintenance See 4.11 and Gage Calibration Tracking. QMDS does the same thing for scheduled preventive maintenance. It becomes difficult or impossible to miss a PM for a tool that's on the list. QMDS presumably logs the completion of the PM as well, thus archiving the required ISO 9000 quality records.
4.10 Inspection and Testing *
4.11 Control of Inspection, Measuring, and Test Equipment (Calibration control) *	CalTrack makes it almost impossible to miss a gage calibration. (The only way to do so appears to be to not have the gage in the system.) It also retains the calibration readings as quality records.
4.12 Inspection and Test Status	See 4.10 above. The data entry module reminds operators when test data are to be entered.
4.13 Control of Nonconforming Products	QMDS can place units on hold if they fail quality tests. One must, of course, still physically segregate them.
4.14 Corrective and Preventive Action We cannot overemphasize the importance of closed-loop corrective action, and closed-loop followup on proactive improvement projects. Too many corrective actions fail due to inattention or lack of followthrough; a TOPS-8D might, for example, get as far as a 3D (contain the problem).	QAR (Quality Action Request) is among QMDS's most outstanding features. This feature makes sure that people follow up until a conclusion is reached. From Stochos' Web site: "The QAR’s closed-loop design ensures that no issues fall through the cracks. The QAR manager can improve and maintain the integrity of your problem solving process. The QAR process incorporates; Initiation of a QAR, Disposition of Material (when required), Disposition Sign-off, Root Cause Analysis, Corrective Action, Corrective Action Sign-off, QAR owner verification, and QAR Manager verification that the Corrective Action eliminated the Root Cause of the nonconformance." QAR can handle any issue that you can put into a closed loop. Consider: Corrective action requests (scrap, rework, defects, returned product) Hiyari (employee-initiated "scare report," where someone identifies a potential trouble source) Safety hiyari Quality hiyari ISO 9000 (or, more generally, quality management system) hiyari Suggestion programs Proactive improvements
4.15 Handling, Storage, Packaging, Preservation, and Delivery
4.16 Control of Quality Records	QMDS stores many quality records such as calibration results
4.17 Internal Quality Audits
4.18 Training
4.19 Servicing
4.20 Statistical Techniques	SPC Direct can be configured to send E-mail (e.g. to engineers, production managers) after a corrective action is taken. Data can be acquired from handheld gages.

• Support for total productive maintenance (TPM)
• Downtime can be tracked by date, machine, job, and reason. Downtime reports include duration, reason, and comments.
• National Semiconductor: "There is no such thing as a minor stoppage." Minor stoppages are waste (non-value-adding activities) and they may indicate underlying problems that can harm the product. (Gardner, Les, and Nappi, Frank. 2001. "The Total Impact of Minor Stoppages." The 6th Annual Lean Management and TPM Conference, sponsored by Productivity Inc. October 25-26, 2001, Dearborn, MI). Characteristics:
1. Minor stoppages are very short.
2. The workers can usually fix them. Friction is any chronic problem that people can "work around."
3. It is not necessary to use spare parts or actually repair anything.
• Policy at the Ford River Rouge plant per Norwood's (1931) Ford: Men and Methods. Workers were authorized to stop the line (a practice later adopted by the Japanese) if there was a problem. Throwing  a switch to do this lit an alarm light in a control booth. If the light stayed on for more than two minutes, the attention of a "trouble mechanic" was required. Even if the workers on the line could fix the stoppage in less time, the cause was still recorded for future action.
• Available in the Shop Floor Data Collection module: 
• Support for out-of-control action matrix (OCAP) or corrective and preventive action matrix (CP Action Matrix)
• Corrective actions can be listed for each out-of-control situation, and knowledge can be added as it is developed.
• These actions can be tied to work instructions (as required by ISO 9000)

This feature makes QMDS compatible with other systems: file transfer avoids double-entry of data.

"Warehouse" is one of the two dirty nine-letter words of lean manufacturing ("inventory" is the other) but a lot of us have to live with them unless we can achieve total make-to-order capability. Until that happens, QMDS's warehouse management module can help out by, among other things, supporting bar-coding and scanning.