Technical Quality Control

The Initial Situation

ÖBB Infrastruktur Betrieb AG is responsible for operating and maintaining the Austrian railway infrastructure, which is subject to strict quality control.

At this point the IQSOFT application for technical quality control comes in. It can be used wherever comprehensive technical documentation and quality inspection of construction, maintenance or repair work is necessary.

The Quality Control Process

The technical quality assurance (TQS) process begins after the construction work is finished.

First the TQS documentation is created (main-tenance type, track etc.). A list of defects to specify the necessary reparations is also part of the description. In addition several documents, like test records can be attached.

Both the principal and the agent of the particular project can access the application. But they may not work on the documentation at the same time. First the principal works on the TQS documentation and then hands it over at a click to the agent. He takes a look at the amendments and may add comments. When he has finished editing he turns it back to the principal again.

This process will be repeated until the principal accredits the total quality. Furthermore the process is multiple-cyclical. Several TQS documentations can belong to one total documentation. In this case there is one workflow per sub-documentation as well as one for the total documentation.

Focus on Factual Correctness

The application serves exclusively the technical quality assurance. The acceptance report confirms the factual correctness of the construction work. This confirmation is the precondition for entering the costs in the commercial systems. However it’s not a booking system. The commercial processes are still conducted by the core systems.

Quality Control through Process Documentation

The aim is to document all communication between the principal and the agent to make it transparent and reproducible.

Via a logbook all amendments of status can be retraced (who has worked on the documentation when?). All comments and documents attached to the documentation are also chronologically listed.

Benefit and Use Cases

• You can create detailed reports and various analyses for commercial considerations out of the data.
• Owing to the comprehensive documentation every step is retraceable, which is especially important for companies, that are subject to an auditing.
• Because it’s a web application with database connection, it’s accessible from any place, also on the road.
• It offers overviews which tasks are already transferred into the commercial systems and were the quality control process is not yet completed.
• All test data is documented and permanently preserved.
• The specific organisation structure is not reproduced. You only differentiate be-tween the two roles principal and agent. Therefore the application is applicable within different types of organisation.
• The application can be easily integrated into the existing commercial systems like SAP or other booking systems.
• A powerful tool for quality control, especially for internal production of goods and services.

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