November 26th, 2008 Posted in Compas Tips | 1 Comment »
The recent flurry of product recalls continue to grab headlines. From tainted food to malfunctioning toys, a recall can mean significant one-time costs for an organization. But, it’s the long-term impact on sales, the company’s reputation and brand as well as ensuing litigation which can truly be staggering.
For one organization, the product recall verification process was performed using paper-based processes which were labor intensive and provided no centralized visibility into the results. After rolling out the Compas application to the internal audit and loss prevention departments, they quickly saw an opportunity to introduce automation to this process.
Since the product recall audit and verification procedure is a special, one-time audit, the organization makes extensive use of the audit notification functionality to send automated emails to the designated areas in order to assign users to complete the new audit.
Corporate executives leverage the audit builder wizard to assign audits to all locations or to groups of locations. Then, instead of drafting an email, writing instructions, and looking up email addresses for each auditor, they simply use the automated form technology to distribute the audits in only a few clicks.
We are in the midst of some very challenging economic times. As many organizations seek to buckle down and reduce costs, consider how you can use Compas as a platform for the entire enterprise. Eliminate departmental silos and look at the entire operation from a more holistic perspective. It could significantly impact your labor productivity, reducing costs and bringing real-time insight to management.
If you are facing challenges extending Compas across the entire enterprise, let us know by emailing info@compasaudit.com.
Example Implementation:
Category Name: Product Recalls
- Create one Version per product recall (Name by SKU # or other identifier), subsequent versions can be created by copying an existing version and just changing the dates and product information.
- Notify those responsible for performing the audit through the new Send Invitations (Edit Version page) function. Send to all auditors that have permission to perform this audit.
Start Audit Instructions (These instructions will be displayed when this audit version is started.)
[Product Name – Numeric Identifier]
On MM/DD/YYYY stores were instructed to remove this product from inventory and destroy it. We must confirm the destruction of this product.
This survey must be completed by [Time] EST on [Date].
Q 1.1 (Yes/No - Required, Critical and Scored)
“Do any of your stores have [Product Name – Numeric Identifier] remaining in their inventory? “
(If the answer to this is Yes, set up a required, predefined action item as follows (you may also set up email notifications for YES answers))
“IMMEDIATELY, destroy [Product Name – Numeric Identifier]. You will receive a subsequent communication to confirm this product is no longer in your stores.”
Assuming that this is set up to be a District level or higher survey, the next question can be set up.
Q 1.2 (Grid Question - Not Required, since if the answer to 1.1 is no, this is N/A
“Enter the store numbers that still have remaining [Product Name – Numeric Identifier] in inventory.”
- Follow up/Communicate on either all those who have not/have completed the audit/survey since a particular date using the same Send Invitations functionality.
- Monitor the locations that have not yet destroyed all product through the reports (based on the scores) and the open action items.