How a manufacturer cut audit preparation by more than half
Evidence captured alongside the work turned a three-week audit scramble into a walkthrough.
Manufacturing customer (placeholder)
Client overview
The customer runs a portfolio of capital and improvement projects, each with quality and safety obligations to meet before work can proceed.
Business challenge
Requirements, risks and approvals were tracked in separate spreadsheets and email threads. Preparing for an audit meant weeks of collecting evidence, and gate decisions were hard to trace afterwards.
- No single view of which risk threatened which requirement
- Gate approvals given by email, with the evidence scattered
- Monthly reports rebuilt by hand from exports
eQMO solution
The team moved its projects onto eQMO, linking each requirement to its risks and actions and running stage gates through the platform. Evidence is attached to the record as the work happens.
- Criteria mapped to risks at project set-up
- ATP raised and answered on the project
- Stage documents kept with each gate
- My Day and alerts for every owner
Modules used Requirements Risk and Action Compliance
Implementation approach
The rollout started small and widened once the first gate review had run on the platform.
-
1
Two pilot projects
Registers imported and roles assigned in the first two weeks.
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2
First gate on the platform
An ATP raised, reviewed and recorded within the first month.
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3
The rest of the portfolio
Remaining projects brought on in two waves.
Results
- 60%
- less audit preparation time
- 3×
- faster gate approvals
- 41%
- fewer overdue actions
Audit preparation now starts from a complete record. Gate decisions are made faster because approvers see the criteria and the evidence together, and fewer actions run overdue because owners see them in My Day.
