The Challenge

An ISO14001, IATF 16949 and ISO 45001 certified company, Polmetasa needed to reduce the time spent on collecting information and on monitoring actions. It was also necessary to conduct a real-time analysis of indicators, since this was only carried out after the data collection and treatment. Finally, information such as indicators and parts history, for example, was not centralized, taking up considerable time for the employees in charge.

The Solution

Polmetasa adopted the SoftExpert module for managing non-conformities, corrective and preventive actions (SoftExpert Action Plan), as well as for results analysis through SoftExpert Analytics. Currently, the company has expanded the number of modules by acquiring the SoftExpert PPM (Project and Portfolio Management) solution, incorporating project, portfolio, and document management modules.

SoftExpert PPM helps prioritize, plan, manage, and execute projects, portfolios, and programs. As an integrated suite, it enables organizations to easily manage their services, projects, products, and resources.

The solution’s infrastructure at Polmetasa is supported by AWS services, ensuring scalability, security, and efficient monitoring. AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is used for container orchestration, providing greater flexibility and operational efficiency. The Amazon RDS managed database ensures high availability and performance for storing and processing strategic data.

For continuous monitoring of the solution, the company relies on Amazon CloudWatch, which provides operational visibility and real-time insights into service performance. Additionally, to enhance security and compliance, Amazon Security Hub and Amazon Inspector are used, ensuring the infrastructure remains protected against vulnerabilities and adheres to best security practices.

The secure and scalable storage of documents generated in the company's management processes is handled by AWS S3, ensuring availability and protection of critical files.

Thus, the solution implemented at Polmetasa not only meets the needs of managers and executives for real-time visibility into indicators, resources, and strategic initiatives but also ensures compliance, operational efficiency, and security through AWS’s robust infrastructure.

Julen González Jiménez, TPM Program Manager, mentions the application’s potential as one of the differentials.

“Many of the functions available in SoftExpert products and solutions, and that satisfied the needs of Polmetasa, were not part of the functionalities of other tools from the market”, says Jiménez.

Moreover, he emphasizes the possibility of customization through multiple configuration options offered by the software.

The Results

SoftExpert PPM is used by around 75 employees. Antonio Alonso, Director of Quality, Safety, and Environment, highlights as a key advantage of the solution a 40% improvement in the effectiveness of action tracking and the accuracy of information analysis. Alonso explains that, for this reason, those in charge began to analyze indicators continuously and in real-time using Business Intelligence (BI).

“Through dashboards SoftExpert PPM enabled us to obtain specific information about relevant indicators, in an easy and simple way, in a single centralized environment. We achieved time and resource savings, besides the transparency of information”, points out the Director.

The integration was mentioned by Jiménez as an achievement of SoftExpert PPM, since in his opinion the solution integrated the company’s quality, safety and environment system, connecting information between the different departments.

So far 1930 inputs have been recorded and 3016 action plans registered. All of these are located in the same repository, allowing improvements in the data flow and facilitating not only access, but also the monitoring and the analysis for decision-makers.