Quality Digest recently spoke with David Isaacson, the executive director of portfolio marketing at Octave. Besides his work on marketing strategies, he also helps people manage, understand, and better control their operations with software solutions that protect industry assets and people while maintaining critical infrastructure. The latest Reliance Advanced Manufacturing Package from Octave offers many such solutions.

Quality Digest: What does this package include, and how accessible is it to manufacturers, teams, and companies?

David Isaacson: The Octave Reliance Advanced Manufacturing Package is a SaaS-based QMS purpose-built for automotive, aerospace, heavy equipment, industrial chemicals, consumer durables, and diversified manufacturing and industrial sectors.

It includes the Reliance QMS core applications, the quality events and planned deviation applications, the new product introduction application set with advanced product quality planning (APQP), and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) enhancements. It also includes the supply-chain quality application set with production part approval process (PPAP) enhancements. Individual applications also include:
• Audits management (including supplier audits)
• Change management (including supplier-led change)
• Supplier, material, and chemicals (including supplier qualification)
• Corrective action (including supplier corrective actions)
• Document control
• Risk register
• Training management
• Assets, calibration, and maintenance
• Hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP)
• Product specification management
• Production part approval process (PPAP)
• Receiving and inspection
• Supplier rating

Octave has partnered with Sandalwood to deliver the advanced manufacturing package. Sandalwood is an engineering and professional services firm with 37 years of experience helping manufacturers improve quality, productivity, and worker safety. The offering is a combination of standard Reliance applications, Sandalwood enhancements, and services that include implementation and customer training shaped by extensive automotive and manufacturing floor experience with more than 5,000 completed projects.

QD: How does this QMS address issues in quality and predict or correct flaws? 

Isaacson: Octave Reliance has a closed-loop architecture. As a result, field complaints, warranty events, nonconformances, and other quality events link directly back to FMEAs and control plans—they’re not siloed in separate systems.

When an issue surfaces, the system traces it through CAPA, deviation authorization, and PPAP resubmission in one connected workflow.

Likewise, corrective actions are tied to root causes with closed-loop tracking, reducing repeat escapes—one of the most common and costly failure modes in fragmented quality operations.

QD: What is applicable here to other manufacturers from multiple industries?

Isaacson: There’s a trend occurring where experienced automotive quality professionals are moving into aerospace, heavy equipment, industrial chemicals, consumer durables, diversified industrials, and even food and beverage production—and they’re bringing methodology expectations with them. Those methods, such as APQP, FMEA, closed-loop corrective action, and supplier qualification, are directly applicable anywhere product complexity is high, and failures have serious consequences.

A fundamental problem the automotive industry faces is universal in other complex and highly regulated environments: If quality data are fragmented across PLM, ERP, MES, SharePoint, documents, and emails, nobody has a complete picture until something goes wrong. And even then, trying to collate all the data can be an extremely manual task. The advanced manufacturing package addresses this.

QD: How does this unified system improve quality, reduce errors, and increase accountability and communication? 

Isaacson: The package provides a single system of record, eliminating the version-control failures and communication gaps that define spreadsheet-based quality: Everyone is working from the same FMEA, the same control plan, and the same corrective action status.

This allows multisite manufacturers to standardize globally and execute locally with the same workflows, standards, and consistent audit readiness in all locations while still maintaining local compliance.

QD: What elements are most helpful for admin and executive teams, and what elements are most helpful for those on the shop floor?

Isaacson: For executive and admin teams, having enterprisewide quality visibility in plants, suppliers, and programs enables unified reports. Being able to quantify the cost of poor quality turns it from a compliance cost center into a margin lever the C-suite can act on. Additionally, audit readiness is always on, so there’s no need to scramble.

For shop floor and quality engineering teams who typically spend hours per week managing PPAP packages manually, the Reliance package centralizes and automates that work with automated linkage to APQP deliverables, FMEAs, MSA, SPC, and control plans.

QD: For automotive suppliers specifically, you mention several exciting features, including advanced product quality planning (APQP), failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), and product part approval process (PPAP). Could you talk more about these and how they affect overall efficiency and quality?

Isaacson: Sure. APQP is the de facto standard for new product introductions (NPI) in the automotive world. A failed launch damages a customer scorecard as well as the relationship, and puts future business at risk. The Reliance project control app manages the full NPI phase-gate process: DFMEA, PFMEA, and control plans integrated into a single program timeline. It also reduces launch-related quality issues and the warranty costs that result from them.

As for FMEA, the core problem is that most manufacturers fall out of sync with actual processes, updating them manually, and often late, so auditors find that reality doesn’t match the documented risk assessment. The Reliance advanced manufacturing package provides a single system of record for DFMEA, PFMEA, and control plans with automatic synchronization throughout process steps, characteristics, and controls.

Traditionally, PPAP processes have been time-consuming, document-heavy, and error-prone, which can delay launches and cause customer rejection. The Reliance capability centralizes PPAP creation with controlled templates, automated linkage to all required supporting documentation, and version-controlled submission history per customer and part number. The payoff is faster, more accurate submissions, fewer customer rejections, and clear visibility into all open PPAPs in all programs.