quality complaint form

Is there a way to have Outlook automate the following process:

Someone within the company fills out a quality complaint form (preferably located within outlook) and it automatically goes to the quality manager with copies to the company president and director of quality.

If the quality manager decides a return is needed, the form then goes to customer service. then when it return comes in, the form goes back to quality. quality then investigates and either says valid or not. either way, the form then goes to the company president and director of quality for their approvals. from there, back to quality for, um, safe keeping.

I read your question and it would be possible to send emails around like this.

But my 2 cents worth (I do not call myself an expert)

Honestly an extensive process like that would be best suited to something other than emails. I would have thought that each quality complaint form should be a record in a database and this record is required to be viewed by these people and then if they check the right check boxes it can then be viewed by other people.

right now, I have the form in Excel with a separte log and people at 2 locations (different states actually). I'm just trying to automate the process a bit.

With travel schedules and vacations and so many people in the loop, it becomes a chore to manage. The president is the worst about signing off and everything after quality signoff depends upon it.

I've heard of people doing this but don't know how to go about doing it.

If this concept works, I would like to apply it other things like engineering change requests, supplier corrective actions, internal corrective actions, and perhaps or cumbersome work order process.

I am not an expert and some other people may have a better way of doing this.

My first choice would be some kind of database where this form is a record with check boxes for each person with a certain responsibility to click.

A second choice might be to add some check boxes to your excel form.

1. Customer Service Filles out the form
2. They click the email button (you have coded the people to email it to)
3. There is a check box for the quality manager "not-accepted" if they have this checked then click the email button it is sent to customer service.

If you get the idea there will be check boxes for accepted, not accepted, checked, ok etc which when checked affect the email addresses that the excel file is sent to.

Is this something you could think would work?

Thanks for the input guys. As a first step, this is what I was thinking. Just found out our network upgrade which would allow us to do this has been delayed by 1 month. Again. Looks like I have some time to really investigate this possibility.

Someone within the company fills out a quality complaint form (preferably located within outlook) and it automatically goes to the quality manager with copies to the company president and director of quality.


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yesw, that is my intension.

right now, I have the form used is in excel. Outside sales people (normally, but could be someone internal, too) send the form to the QM, QM begins the investigation while notifying the president and DoQ (an FYI email). Once the initial investgation is completed, the QM either says valid on invalid and then hands off to the president. president then decides if further action is necessary like sales accomodation, flat out rejection, scold the sale person for not enough info to support the claim, whatever. then the form comes back to the QM to be filed (electronically). If there is a credit to be issued, then customer service and accounting get involved. If the complaint is valid and is a supplier issue, then we seek compensation from our supplier and purchasing gets involved.

so basically, from a Quality perspective, once the president signs off, the we are done. what happens in the front office is procedural and is not commented on the form.

in a nut shell: sales enters complaint->QM send FYI email and then investigates-> QM determines validity sends email/form for approval/disposition->QM files form.

A separate log is kept for "at-a-glance" status. WHat's open, where is the bottleneck?