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  • International leader Covercraft gains certifications by automating quality management with SoftExpert

    Published on 04/09/2024

    The industry leader in the manufacture of protective products for automotive, marine, and recreational vehicles received IATF 16949 and ISO 9001 certifications Covercraft received certification of its Quality Management System at three Group units, in less than 12 months of the project, with the support of the SoftExpert EQM solution for enterprise quality management. Headquartered in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, with facilities also located in California, Colorado, Montana, South Carolina, Texas, and Mexico, Covercraft has over 1,000 employees. The company specializes in making specialized protective fabric covers for interiors and exteriors of vehicles of all kinds. With a portfolio of over 300,000 models, including proprietary and licensed products for brands such as Barrett-Jackson, Carhartt, Ford, Major League Fishing, and Winnebago as well as several automotive OEM dealer networks, Covercraft is certainly well-represented in the transportation and recreation markets. Over the last five years, the company has seen substantial growth due to business unit acquisitions as well as organic growth in demand for its products, including ADCO, Carver Industries, GT Covers, and Marathon Seat Covers. According to Covercraft's Quality Director, Roby Potts, the company began to experience some post-expansion hardships in managing quality processes in an organized fashion and it turned to the global software market for help. "We were looking for a solution that could be implemented across all of our facilities, with central administration." [caption id="attachment_88278" align="alignleft" width="300"] Covercraft Quality Manager, Regina Ibarra and Quality Director, Rob Potts[/caption] Potts explains that the tool's technical quality features, plus its modular and scalable platform were a major factor in its selection, allowing for standardization of business activities and compliance with industry regulations, at the speed the company needed. "Three months after implementation in two plants in Texas and Oklahoma, we were able to quickly organize and automate quality processes at the Mexicali plant with much of the content in Spanish. We moved quickly to roll it out at other locations. It is a highly configurable solution and soon we were able to exert an excellent level of control over the organization, driving standardization and efficiencies across plants," he says. The system is used in the manufacturing and support areas, especially in management, delivery, and document control, assuring compliance with auto industry standards, such as IATF 16949 - an international quality management system standard for this market. The company's Quality team also uses the solution to manage action plans, implementing corrective and preventive actions, in addition to conducting changes and audits, making the Quality Management System more agile and robust. Another benefit highlighted by Potts is that by structuring and documenting our processes, our factories were able to replicate the management model, without the need to develop instructions for local work. "Our biggest gain, without a doubt, was IATF 16949 certification for two of our facilities and ISO 9001 certification for our Mexico factory," Potts notes. The company is now looking at the challenges of automating processes at another two factories over the next three months, authorizing the recently developed change management workflow, and implementing the APQP module, which will help the organization guarantee simple and effective control in new product development.

     

    ABOUT SOFTEXPERT

    Operating in the business management software market, SoftExpert emerged in 1995 in southern Brazil. Currently, the brand has over 500 employees, 2,000 customers, 600,000 users spread across 50 countries, 300 partners worldwide, including strategic alliances with companies such as AWS, Bakertilly, Deloitte, Kodak Alaris, and DocuSign, in addition to business units in 9 countries. This is because SoftExpert has solutions for companies ranging from business management and corporate quality to environmental, project and government management in just one contract for its customers, providing them with greater efficiency, agility, and cost-effectiveness. Its global presence shows that SoftExpert adapts its range of services according to the needs of companies, as well as their locations. The platform offers a set of multi-language modules that are integrated to automate processes and optimize different business areas of organizations. Follow the standards for your management of all kinds of regulations, like: ISO, FDA, COBIT, COSO, IATF, FSSC, ITL, SOX and many others.

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