Deployment and Optimization of the Qualification Process for Initiatives in the Air Care Business: a Procter & Gamble case study.

Initiatives represent day to day business in plenty of companies, from manufacturing to service organizations: they provide continuous innovation to the business while always fulfilling consumer needs and quality requirements. Even though initiatives are created to satisfy consumer expectations on a specific product or performance, they need to comply with a strict system of rules and regulations ensuring the fulfilment of the success criteria. This paper addresses the Initiative deployment in one of the best companies in the laundry and cleaning supply sectors: Procter & Gamble. Procter & Gamble has a rigorous quality system in place in order to provide branded products and services of superior quality and value that improve the lives of the world's consumers, now and for generations to come. The reputation of every product is based on the assurance that it is safe for humans and the environment. The initiative on which this paper is based was deployed by the External Supply Solutions department in cooperation with a Contract Manufacturer. In particular, the qualification process for an initiative in the Air Care sector will be illustrated. This initiative qualifies two new formulas for two products of the brand Ambi Pur/Febreze to mitigate the uneven formula runout which is the #1 consumer complaint at the Contract Manufacturer site. It describes the journey and the multiple controls to be performed throughout the supply chain in order to ensure the correct deployment of the initiative. In addition to this, based on the thorough qualification process performed in case of initiatives, with the help of the Quality Assurance team we decided to optimize the procedure to be performed in case of qualification of seasonals for the Air Care business. This optimization split in two waves will ensure the simplification of bureaucracy behind an initiative, needed to perform the qualification while consistently guaranteeing the compliance with the success criteria.