Creating a culture of quality at Synthego

Synthego is a genome engineering company that leverages machine learning, automation, and gene editing technologies to accelerate life science research and development and, ultimately, improve human health. 

Effectively accomplishing this mission is only possible by building a robust quality culture that permeates across the organization, according to Beckinam Nowatzke, the company’s head of quality.

“We’ve embarked on multiple important projects that require high-quality, precise genome engineering,” Beckinam explains. “To achieve that, there is value and focus on quality across the organization.”

What is a quality culture?

A quality culture is an environment in which employees see everything through the lens of quality — one in which quality is the lifeblood of the organization, touching upon everything the company does.

To this end, Synthego recently achieved ISO 9001:2015 certification, proving that its manufacturing processes for developing gene therapeutics and CRISPR-based gene editing meet some of the highest quality standard requirements in the world. 

The company also launched a standalone quality page on its website that outlines the company’s quality and quality management mission, and what it’s doing to ensure the highest levels of quality.

With their culture of quality, Synthego is able to move beyond just compliance, taking a proactive approach to quality instead of responding to proverbial fires. As a result, customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction improve, and their bottom line increases.

The critical role an eQMS plays in creating a culture of quality

As Synthego began enhancing its quality culture, Beckinam started searching for an electronic quality management solution (eQMS) that would enable the company to build and sustain a culture that positioned them for success. 

With the right solution in place, all employees would be aligned around a central system that would integrate hardware, software, bioinformatics, chemistries, and molecular biology to advance basic research, drug target validation, and clinical trials.

As Beckinam narrowed down their options, she outlined specific requirements. In addition to being exciting and easy to use, the right solution would: 

• Enable a quality culture that uses cutting-edge technology to advance science and medicine
  
  
• Allow Synthego to position the QMS as a competitive advantage that is scalable and can support massive growth
  
  
• Ensure that quality was built into every part of the company’s operations 

What to look for in an eQMS

For Beckinam, building a quality culture starts with getting everyone on the team excited about quality. And one easy way to do that is by investing in a modern eQMS solution that’s designed to meet user expectations.

As you begin looking to build your own culture of quality, here’s what to look for in an eQMS:

• An easy-to-use interface that’s intuitive by design and requires minimal training
  
  
• The ability to rapidly pull up real-time metrics, dashboards, and KPIs
  
  
• A solution that is scalable enough to can keep pace with rapid growth across GMP-regulated operations and non-regulated teams, too
  
  
• A system built for cross-functional collaboration for everything from training, document control, and quality events to working with suppliers and managing a supply chain
  
  
• A vendor that sees customers more as long-term partners and not revenue streams, one that will leverage feedback to improve their solutions over time

Due to the essential role an eQMS plays in creating a culture of quality, it’s critical to do your due diligence during your search for a solution.

From Beckinam’s perspective, the eQMS you ultimately select can either make or break your quality aspirations. For Synthego, selecting the right eQMS has “been a real game-changer for us in quality” because teams “have all of that information and collaboration at our fingertips.”

“It’s really allowed quality to interact with other functions of operations,” Beckinam says. “We’re getting our research teams to document investigations and quality events even though they’re not required to by any regulation.”

Ultimately, creating and implementing a quality culture isn’t as hard as it might sound.

“When you build a framework around something, people feel comfortable with that culture of quality and the idea that compliance isn’t a scary word,” Beckinam concludes. “It has brought the quality team closer together and enabled our teams to become more compliant within the quality world.”

For more information on what you can do to build a quality culture, check out this free guide..