Problem Management

Effective data collection, rigorous investigation, appropriate actions and problem analysis are the founding principles of continuous improvement. Within this context, problem analysis can be viewed as the process of understanding the real cause of a problem, followed then by taking actions to understand those causes and transform them into a set of changes that will result in better products and services. SE Problem Analysis is a process-based tool designed to determine the main root causes of an IT, quality, safety, health, environmental, reliability or production-related problems, helping organizations identify those aspects that have potential impact on product and service quality.

Problems are best solved by attempting to address, correct or eliminate root causes, as opposed to merely addressing the immediately obvious symptoms. SE Problem Analysis offers all the tools needed to help your organization investigate errors, defects, failures, losses, outages and incidents in a wide variety of industries - from IT service management to product manufacturing.

SE Problem Analysis improves the way people analyze, document, communicate and solve problems in both segments:

IT Incidents

• Recurring incidents and known errors.
• Pro-active prevention of incidents, errors and additional problems.

Quality Non-Conformances

• Product defects as reported by multiple customer complaints
• Audit non-conformances
• Tendencies and deviation from the manufacturing processes
• Environmental impacts

SE Problem Analysis is aligned with the key elements of major frameworks such as ISO, FDA and ITIL, offering configurable workflows, forms and business rules that match the unique requirements of each organization.

SE Problem Analysis will provide your organization with the following benefits:

• Reduces problem resolution cycles by speeding up the solution for those problems tied up in the process.
• Spots problems or weak practices from across the business.
• Eliminates the need for personnel to scan through all related material, assets and documentations to find a solution for the problem.
• Develops an ethos of continuous improvement and advancement.
• Closes the loop on the incident/problem analysis, reducing the effort spent managing corrective and preventive actions.
• Reduces recurrence while automatically notifying those responsible for corrective and preventive actions.
• Significant cost and time savings and better use of available resources.

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When a type of incident becomes recurrent or has a powerful impact on the IT infrastructure, the role of Problem Management is to determine its causes and look for possible solutions. Problem Management also prevents incidents from occurring, or reoccurring, by identifying weaknesses or errors in the infrastructure and proposing applicable resolutions. Therefore, an effective Problem Management delivers improvements in service quality, reduces support costs, increases productivity, and thus maximizes profitability.

Built on ITIL V3® best practices, SE Problem Analysis manages the resolution of the root cause of a problem, minimizes the impact of incidents, and helps to avoid unnecessary or unplanned downtime. Its tight integration with other IT service management processes allows the service desk to identify the configuration item at the root of the problem, to gather information on available workarounds, and to submit a Request for Change when a final solution is developed.

Features

• Intuitive graphical drag & drop tool for root cause analysis and for construction of problem resolution workflows
• Begin root cause analysis and investigation at any step of your problem resolution process.
• Automatically assign tasks and activities for problem investigation to team members
• Enables the conditional escalation of actions to other roles when and where required.
• Helps users to collect, organize and understand information about a specific incident or a number of related incidents.
• Evaluates risks in problem resolution such as complexity, urgency, downtime, and potential impact.
• Accesses detailed problem descriptions and a history log of all activities and changes.
• Aggregates related documentation, process, procedures, and action plans to problem record.
• Full audit and logging capabilities and advanced reporting and analytics.

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Only after determining why a failure has occurred you are able to plan corrective actions and measures that prevent the same problems from occurring again. However, understanding why an issue is raised in the first place is the key to implementing quality management systems. By enhancing the root causes of problems, an organization is able to design effective business processes. With careful data collection, cause charting, root cause identification and corrective action plan implementation, SE Problem Analysis allows your organization to identify what the problem is, as well as how and why it happened.

By applying a flexible, quick and intuitive set of customizable problem resolution workflows, SE Problem Analysis allows your organization to identify problems originating from multiple non-conformances, complaints, deviations or compliance variances. SE Problem Analysis allows you to demonstrate to customers, internal auditors and third party organizations that you are serious about continuous improvement, and more importantly, about meeting and exceeding customer needs.

Features

• Intuitive graphic drag & drop tool for root cause analysis and for the construction of problem resolution workflows
• The means to begin root cause analysis and investigation at any step of your problem resolution process.
• Track CAPA progress and deliverables.
• Automatically assign problem investigation tasks and activities to team members.
• Helps users collect, organize and understand information about a specific incident or a number of related incidents.
• Allows for the conditional escalation of actions to other roles when and where required.
• Adds related documentation, processes, procedures and action plans to the problem record.

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