The company uses a quality management system certified in accordance with DIN EN ISO 9001 and uses QM software for this purpose. "After we grew significantly in terms of structure and turnover, our audits showed that the existing software no longer met our requirements," explains Dipl.-Wirtsch.-Ing. Muhammet Ay, QHSE administrator at the company. The new solution needed to enable systematic documentation that would allow the creation, review and approval of processes and documents to be tracked transparently. In addition, interfaces and interactions should be able to be displayed company-wide. The requirements also included a simple search function and a transparent assignment of process indicators.

One system, two access options

"We carried out a benefit analysis among six different providers, with Consense achieving the highest score and therefore being awarded the contract," says Muhammet Ay. Stauff opted for Consense IMS Enterprise. The highly configurable software solution is suitable for setting up a transparent and easy-to-maintain quality management or integrated management system. The Enterprise version was developed for companies with complex management system or process structures, several applicable standards or other regulations. It is also optimized for complex organizational structures with several locations and international use and can be tailored to individual requirements thanks to numerous configuration options and modular extensions.

The Consense software is available as a desktop application and as a web application for management systems that are independent of end devices and operating systems. Stauff chose both solutions. It can be used via the locally installed Consense Suite or via a browser using the web-based Consense Portal solution. The advantage of the web application is the faster roll-out and less effort for maintenance and updates. Employees can access all processes, documents and other content of their management system regardless of device or location.

Implementation project in five phases

A project team consisting of Project Manager Muhammet Ay, Dipl.-Ing. Rüdiger Grewen, Head of QHSE, and Stefan Baumbach, Quality Assurance Team Leader, managed the introduction. In addition, all process owners were involved, who designated key users for the various areas and participated in the process implementation. The implementation took place in five phases. The first step involved the analysis, which consisted of defining the requirements, sounding out the providers and the management's decision in favor of the solution from the Aachen-based software company. The next step involved the design: the as-is mapping of the processes was prepared, a kick-off meeting with the process owners and key users gave the go-ahead for implementation and the participants were trained. Then, in the third step, the process landscape was designed and the processes were recorded, developed and modeled. Using an integrated process editor, the Consense software enables a quick and easy graphical representation of the company processes in the form of flow charts. The system passed the subsequent phase 4 tests, and finally, in the fifth step, Consense IMS Enterprise was rolled out. The introduction was communicated to the employees in parallel.