Swisslog Improves Quality Of Process Maturity With MKS - Mks.com

Case Study
Company Overview
Swisslog is a global provider of integrated
logistic solutions for warehouses,
distribution centers and hospitals. Their
comprehensive portfolio ranges from
building complex warehouses and
distribution centers including Swisslog’s
software, in-house logistics solutions for
hospitals as well as software and
consulting services in the field of supply
chain management. Swisslog’s solutions
optimize the customer’s production,
logistics and distribution processes in
order to increase their flexibility, respon-
siveness and quality of service, while
minimizing logistics costs. Swisslog is
headquartered in Buch/Aarau, Switzerland,
and has over 2,000 employees in approxi-
mately 20 countries on four continents:
Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia.
Swisslog Improves Quality
Of Process Maturity With MKS
“The MKS product suite will allow us to grow into the Capability
Maturity Model for Software gracefully. Also, with Swisslog’s move to
ISO certification, the Controls group has a jump on our internal process
to aid the ISO certification overall.”
Scott Skrine, Controls Engineer and Manager, Swisslog Healthcare Solutions NA
The Challenge
Process quality is a key business priority
at Swisslog -- their business depends
upon it. Recently, the director of quality
has taken the first steps towards ISO
9001:2000 certification. In the Healthcare
Solutions group in North America, Scott
Skrine’s team is ahead of the curve and
looking for ways to ensure consistent,
high quality process to maximize resource
use and create increased customer
satisfaction.
Building process maturity is a long-term
goal for Swisslog, but the Controls
Engineering team is well on its way. This
team serves three customers – internal
customers such as quality assurance and
mechanical engineering; the field team
at various external customer sites and
actual external hospital customers.
Managing change seamlessly is fundamental
to successfully deliver logistic
solutions for all of these customers.
The Solution
Swisslog has now implemented a clear
and streamlined process and workflow
within their controls engineering team
and is engaging other parts of the
organization to migrate onto the same
technology platform for extended benefit.
Scott has provided controls and process
understanding explicitly to demonstrate
a direct and positive customer impact.
MKS Integrity’s process and workflow
tracks the bugs while MKS Source tracks
version control and source control. Using
MKS, Swisslog tracks which changes, which
files and which baselines go with various
service packs, and track release notes
based on the bug fixes. The company
has even engaged its customers in their
enhancement and maintenance process.
1 | Swisslog Case Study

Case Study
Swisslog
Swisslog has adopted MKS form to capture
input from their field organization and
internal customers (QA, mechanical
engineering) allowing the development
team to identify bugs and change
requests from the field. This gives Scott’s
team a better understanding about the
volume and nature of bugs coming in.
This feedback loop increases effective
communication and allows for continuous
improvement in serving the customers’
needs. Field staff plan to use the web
interface to connect from customer sites.
There is no ‘after the fact’ write up
-- instead the field staff sit at a customers’
machine and send in the bug fix requirements.
With real-time entry, information
is more factual since it is done with
customer input on site.
2 | Swisslog Case Study
Swisslog additionally uses MKS to control
documentation on specifications – tech
writers can check in help builds and the
end user documents such as word files
and PDFs for the three different types of
customers – internal engineering, tech
field staff and the end-user, customer at
the hospital.
Swisslog is now introducing an issue type
called ‘requirement’ inside of MKS to allow
them to solicit customers and engineering
for their requirements up front as part of
a planned process. This requirements
management capability within MKS
Integrity enables Scott’s team to track the
requirements as an issue type, assign
issues to a developer and provides
complete downstream traceability and
connection to work being done, the
transition to QA.
If there’s a bug -- it tracks directly back to
the requirements. Project managers gain
complete visibility and can see how many
projects are complete, track against use
cases, and enter the use case if required.
As Scott’s team begins to interface with
other departments, they can showcase
their planning and estimates, and store
the requirements as needed when
projects come online or are put on hold.
Using MKS Integrity and project descriptions,
they are able to create various issue
types within the same projects so that
mechanical and software issues are both
able to be seen.

The Results
With Scott Skrine’s leadership and vision,
his software engineering team is able
to respond more effectively to the needs
of their internal and external customers,
and set Swisslog’s HealthCare Solutions
division firmly on a path to quality maturity.
Process and workflow has become much
more streamlined and able to document
service packs with greater detail, reliability
and consistency. Improved processes
have demonstrated greater efficiency.
Improved visibility into the issues
management, tracking and resolution
process have served as a model of
process maturity for other areas in the
company. Customers have more direct
and real time input into the development
process, raising customer satisfaction.
Future plans for MKS could include
expansion to the quality team that oversees
the quality of software, mechanical
engineering and construction projects.
The hardware side of the organization is
currently using manual quality reporting
and may also see the benefits of streamlining
and automating their change
management process and workflow with
MKS Integrity.
The software engineering group is
currently working with the mechanical
engineering team and the quality
assurance team to investigate broadening
the process framework to be inclusive of
these two teams as well so that the three
teams can collaborate better, save time
and provide the best solutions for their
customers.
“The interface and integrations for MKS products allow our engineers
to spend more time programming and debugging than tracking
issues and changes. Our release engineer can then spend time
focusing on releases, services packs, and process improvement
instead of babysitting the development process.”
Scott Skrine, Controls Engineer and Manager, Swisslog Healthcare Solutions NA
3 | Swisslog Case Study

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