Welcome to another edition of the ‘SAP Business Network for Supply Chain: What is ?’ blog series posts where I cover in more detail the scope, capabilities, use cases, and benefits of SAP Business Network for Supply Chain.

This time I will focus on quality collaboration through the ‘SAP Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration, quality add-on solution, and last time I covered What is SAP Business Network Planning Collaboration.

Let’s first define ‘Quality Collaboration’ to then explain what we offer in our ‘SAP Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration, quality add-on offering.

Quality collaboration in the context of manufacturing, is a business practice that involves working together with suppliers or other trading partners, to ensure that products such as raw materials, packaging materials or the components for assembly being provided meet the appropriate standards of quality and compliance.

As it happens in modern approaches on business collaboration, it is an imperative to communicate that components are free of errors and permanently monitor processes with the objective to prevent defects and nonconformities. In some industries for example Life Sciences, companies need to engage with suppliers and contract manufacturers in CAPA Programs – Corrective actions and Preventive actions to ensure that drug products are safe and compliant.

Most likely, companies are leveraging a Quality Management back-end system like SAP S/4HANA Quality Management, and this is where SAP Business Network solutions come into to play to natively extend Quality Collaboration processes between companies and their trading partners.

Traditionally, Quality Data is shared and managed through paper, e-mail or manual data entry.

With the quality add-on offered with SAP Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration,  data on Quality Management activities such as Quality Notifications, Quality Inspections and Quality Review of materials and finished products can be digitally shared between companies and their trading partners.

SAP Business Network is a Trading Partner’s single place for activity review, and the integrated document repository enables tracking and event/incident, Audit Trail and reporting.

Scenarios Supported by SAP Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration, quality add-on include:

• Quality Notification Collaboration allows Companies and Trading Partners to collaborate on deviations during manufacturing, inspection or post goods receipt.
• Quality Inspection Collaboration enables Trading Partners send inspection results along with certificate.
• Quality Review Collaboration enables the digital exchange and review of quality documents including unstructured communications such as batch records and change requests between companies and their trading partners.

Let’s see the supported scenarios graphically:

SAP Business Network Quality Collaboration

Digital Sharing of Quality Information over SAP Business Network

I want to wrap up this post by sharing some benefits that our customers achieve.

• Reduce trading partner defect rates and overall cost of quality by infusing efficiency and visibility across your supply chain
• Gain visibility into quality issues and complaints while aligning trading partners to resolve issues quickly
• Eliminate manual information sharing and standardize quality collaboration with trading partners

How is the SAP Business Network Quality Collaboration approach different?

• Integrates product quality specifications and processes with the procurement process and corresponding transactions.
• Offers collaborative quality review, notification and inspection results on a digital network.
• Provides legal compliance and support to meet FDA Part 11 “Electronic Records: Electronic Signature”

Do you want to learn more ? Check the SAP’s Product Page here and read the solution brief.

Stay tuned for my next blog and let me know how you are extending and digitizing your Quality Management back-end and collaborate with your trading Partner community around Quality Documents.