“We strive for sustainable growth”

In or­der to move away from pa­per and trans­fer qua­li­ty ma­nage­ment to the di­gi­tal world, Lich­ten­heldt has in­stal­led a new ERP sys­tem and in­tro­du­ced the Di­gi­tal Life Sci­en­ces do­cu­ment and qua­li­ty ma­nage­ment sys­tem.  The ba­sis of the dls | eQMS is a ho­li­stic ECM/DMS sys­tem, which can be mo­du­lar­ly ex­ten­ded by fur­ther d.velop pro­ducts for clas­si­fi­ca­ti­on, struc­tu­ring, sto­rage and ver­sio­ning of in­for­ma­ti­on. The fo­cus at Lich­ten­heldt is on the do­cu­ment con­trol mo­du­le. In­s­tead of prin­ting out SOP and at­tach­ments, the com­pa­ny stores do­cu­ments in a cen­tral da­ta­ba­se that all em­ployees can ac­cess. The ad­van­ta­ge of this sto­rage: Col­le­agues al­ways work with up-to-date do­cu­ments. It is im­pos­si­ble to have dif­fe­rent ver­si­ons floa­ting around, caus­ing con­fu­si­on and er­ror-pro­nen­ess. Rough: “With the d.3 eQMS sys­tem, we are not only in­cre­asing trans­pa­ren­cy and se­cu­ri­ty, but also spee­ding up the work­flows as­so­cia­ted with new SOPs.”

The fol­lo­wing ex­am­p­le shows why the d.3 eQMS from Di­gi­tal Life Sci­en­ces im­pro­ves SOP ma­nage­ment: A new SOP in qua­li­ty con­trol is on the agen­da. An em­ployee wri­tes the do­cu­ment in Word. In­s­tead of run­ning to get si­gna­tures of the re­spon­si­ble per­sons af­ter­wards, he sa­ves the file in the da­ta­ba­se of d.3 eQMS sys­tems. When editing is com­ple­te, a pre­de­fi­ned do­cu­ment cir­cu­la­ti­on starts au­to­ma­ti­cal­ly. The first per­son to see a mes­sa­ge in their dls | eQMS in­box, for ex­am­p­le, is the la­bo­ra­to­ry ma­na­ger, who is as­ked to check the con­tent of the do­cu­ment for ac­cu­ra­cy and con­firm the check with a si­gna­tu­re. Sin­ce a ma­nu­al si­gna­tu­re is no lon­ger pos­si­ble, two-way au­then­ti­ca­ti­on co­mes into play. The la­bo­ra­to­ry ma­na­ger uses one pass­word to log into the sys­tem and an­o­ther to place his di­gi­tal si­gna­tu­re on the document.

Af­ter this elec­tro­nic si­gna­tu­re, the au­to­ma­ted cir­cu­la­ti­on con­ti­nues. Now the qua­li­ty con­trol ma­na­ger finds a mes­sa­ge in his mail­box as­king him to ap­pro­ve the new SOP. In the fi­nal stage, this SOP is re­leased by the head of qua­li­ty assu­rance. Step by step, the work in­s­truc­tion thus finds its way th­rough a pre­de­fi­ned, pu­rely di­gi­tal ap­pr­oval pro­cess. “Thanks to this di­gi­ta­liza­ti­on, we have ma­na­ged to save time and re­sour­ces while ma­king pro­ces­ses more secure.”