Specification management is the practice of standardizing your product/packaging specifications such as raw materials, ingredients, formulas, packaging, finished goods, bill of materials (BOM), and quality documents in a centralized system. Creating one single source of truth enables you to control and approve the values and inputs of your specs through structured data and automate the review, approval and distribution processes of those specs to stakeholders and suppliers.
Many companies still use spreadsheets, Lotus Notes, or homegrown file share systems to manage their specifications causing inefficiencies that lead to errors and rework for employees, inconsistent processes across different departments/business units, and costly delays in production. A disorganized spec management process can also have a major impact on highly regulated companies who must comply with government regulations, resulting in legal ramifications, sanctions and fines.
Maximize Your Efficiency with a Specification Management Software
The purpose of specification management software is to streamline the creation, collaboration, review, approval, and distribution of your specifications and automate the parts of your processes that are highly manual and prone to human error. Establishing one centralized platform for managing your specifications and other critical business documents gives you the power to implement standards across your organization and align different departments to maximize efficiency, save money, and ensure compliance.
Create Specifications: Create specs with electronic forms where you can structure your data with controlled, approved values.
Searching: Search with precision at the field level.
Automate Review & Approval: Set routing that will notify stakeholders by email when they have a spec to review or approve in the system
Linking: Link to related documents such as drawings, make instructions, test methods and procedures and add business rules to control parent-child relationships.
Master Specs: Manage the generic spec for various components and propagate W&D, materials, etc. to the individual specs, where master data will not be editable at the specification level.
Visibility: Gain visibility across your product line with the ability to see all parent BOMs where a component is used.
Security: Security model that supports control over who can do what, to which content (Common Specs v. SKUs v. BOMs v. Drawings)
Notifications: Automated email notifications to suppliers and stakeholders when specs and docs become effective
Supplier Management: Collaborate with suppliers on specs in a controlled environment and manage which suppliers have access to specific documents
Reporting: Create different PDF or Excel reports for different audiences and stitch together parent report with attachments and subordinate specs/references/drawings
The ENSUR Specification Management System
The ENSUR Specification Management Software is a comprehensive system for creating, maintaining and publishing your specifications and business documents. The browser-based system is available on-premises or in our GxP compliant Cloud so that your employees and stakeholders can access the system anytime, anywhere. Fully integrated with our document management features, the software allows for complete control over who can access which documents and tracks all activities with the ability to create reports for visibility and compliance. ENSUR’s version control features guarantee that your employees and suppliers are always working from the correct version of a spec or document. The document management system integrates with your email client to send email notifications to internal and external stakeholders at each step of the workflow, improving collaboration and increasing the efficiency of your processes.
The ENSUR document management system is available validated, both on-premises and in our GxP cloud, and has built in functionality to help you meet and exceed regulations, including the US FDA 21 CFR Part 11, US Fair Packaging Labeling Act, Canada Consumer Product & Labelling Act, Canada Cannabis Act, EU CELEX, Germany VerpackG, and others.
- What is specification management?
- Specification management is the practice of standardizing your specifications in a centralized system where you can control and approve the values and inputs of your specs through structured data and automate the review, approval and distribution processes of specs to stakeholders and suppliers.
- Why is spec management more efficient?
- Spec management automates the parts of your processes that are highly manual and prone to human error. By having all of your employees create, manage and share specs in one, centralized system, you can ensure standards are enforced across your organization, increase efficiency and decrease time to market.
- Why do I need a specification management system?
- A spec management system will drastically increase efficiency, provide visibility across your product lines, help you maintain compliance, and decrease your product time to market.
- How does a specification management system automate workflow?
- A specification management system allows you to create enforced templates for your specs so that data is consistent across your organization. A well-designed system will automatically tie revisions to individual specifications to their parent specification (i.e. a revised component will automatically be related to its parent BOMs). You can also set default routing for review and approval and default distributions for when a spec becomes effective.
