TQM Total Quality Management for Non Planned Defective Material Containment

Question

HI SAP Experts,
My overall goal with this posting is to try and get a better understanding of some of the SAP best practices that have been implemented at other companies for defect containment in a global company (we have operations in China, Japan, USA, EU, Korea etc).
We are in the project charter phase to re-define how we identify and contain our non-planned defective materials / processes.   Historically we have used external custom applications written in ASP Visual Basic Intradev 6.0 to manage many of our processes including Defective Material Containment.   We have found that these processes are not scalable and not sustainable and looking to SAP applications to help provide solutions.   
Our current process flow is basically as follows  --> Request Notification (with approval) --> Purge (Identify stock locations globally material exists in and pull inventory into a consolidated location where it can be controlled - Inspection, Materials, Customer Service etc) and Finally disposition - these processes are doing in SAP with QM notifications for materials.   You can see my disparate issues - no integrated reporting, responsiblity nor follow through.
The process is quite cumbersome (multiple data entry points, duplication of data) and not scalable. The only integration we have with this custom ASP application is that is used to provide the current inventory levels (in stock) at the time of the Containment was approved and the use of material status to lock parts so movements can not be performed during this initiative.
My basic thoughts on the process in SAP is as follows: 
1.  QM-QN Quality Notification (identify compliant, related tasks and approval to proceed with containment).
2.  QM-MM Identify and Contain Parts globally using MM  (Task - separate notification completion driven as follow-on activity and notification record linked to primary notification)-->
3.  QM -  inspection lot for Quality to identify inspection criteria for non planned defect and generate defective Notifications  for each defect found to ensure data integrity and historical tracking of problems.
4. QM - Completion and disposition of Inspection lot.  Related notifications may still be open or not depending the owners disposition. 
5. QM  That same owner also has the decision to tighten or loosen inspection requirements for that material and vendor.
Basically I'm curious if I am even close in this process of going the right direction or not.   And is why I hope others might be able to share the process that they have implemented that identify (non planned) defects and containment processing.
I'm interested in any ideas you have on the basic high level concepts to ensure I am choosing the right modules and / or processes.
R/3 or SAP ECC6.0 is a little cumbersome to manage all these processes so we are also looking to see if any SAP customers have used Portal for such a processes. 
If you do have a process map / flow with some screen shot's to share that would also be a great asset to us as we begin planning this project.
Thanks and Regards,
Edited by: Ed Bunn on Feb 1, 2010 3:45 PM
Edited by: Ed Bunn on Feb 1, 2010 3:45 PM

Answer 1

Ed,
I think you fitted your entire process in this single thread. I am not clear whether your containment stock across all these countries are releated to vendor complaints or is its also a mix of your in process rejections too.
Suggestion 1,
If this containment across plants are related to vendor related defetcs, use Q2 notification for vendor rejection. through this notification defects can be captured, task can be assigned to vendor for completion. Status of thsi task can be monitored and captured through notification both at a line item level and header level. 8D, CAPA and all will be incorporated in this notification. This forms a closed loop for vendor defect analysis.
Suggestion 2,
Consolidating containment stock from different plants across countries can be done through action box facility- Transfer stock posting.
Transfer post from unrestricted to block or Transfer post from Unrestricted to Quality or Transfer post from Blocked to Quality.
Its better you can create a seperate storage location and go ahead with this consolidation.
Now you can decide, this consolidation happen across plant level or towards one corporate plant level, anyway plant is mandatory when you deal with inventory.
I hope this thread will throw some light towards your requirements.
Concluding QM-QN is having a best practise closed loop, if it is mapped well as I have worked with this functionality very well. Workflow is another activity which you can think of, if you need a control on this plantwise.
Vendor wise inspection controls can be activated through Dynamic Modification Rule T Code: QDR1and Quality Level controls T Code: QDL1.
Thanks,
Vineeth
Edited by: Vineeth Varghese on Feb 2, 2010 7:04 AM