Quality Monitoring Service

We believe our quality assurance procedures are among the best in the industry. Adding the Quality Monitoring Service to your Abaqus license is a cost-effective way to leverage our QA work in achieving your own quality assurance objectives.

Introduction

Increasingly, customers find that monitoring their suppliers' quality activities is a desirable or mandatory component of their own quality assurance work. To assist customers in meeting this requirement, SIMULIA offers the Quality Monitoring Service. The service has four components:

• A controlled copy of the Abaqus Quality Assurance Manual

• Notification of "potentially serious errors"

• A copy of the Abaqus annual QA audit

• The right to conduct the customer's own QA audit

The Quality Monitoring Service is available for the following Abaqus products: Abaqus/ADAMS, Abaqus/Aqua, Abaqus/CAE, Abaqus/Design, Abaqus/Explicit, Abaqus/Moldflow, Abaqus/Standard, and Abaqus/Viewer.

The Quality Monitoring Service replaces the previously available NQA-1 license option, while maintaining all key aspects of that service. Unlike the NQA-1 license, the Quality Monitoring Service covers both general and maintenance product releases.

Quality Assurance Manual

Quality Monitoring Service customers receive controlled copies of the Abaqus Quality Assurance Manual. This document defines the processes used at Abaqus to ensure quality. It is designed to comply with the ISO 9001:2000 standard. A "controlled" copy means that customers receive all revisions to the manual. In this way, such customers are informed in detail of the processes used at SIMULIA for quality assurance and are notified of any changes in those processes.

Notification of "Potentially Serious Errors"

Our Quality Management System is designed to meet the ISO 9001:2000 requirements and the ASME NQA-1 requirements. NQA-1 discusses "conditions adverse to quality" under the section on corrective action. NQA-1 includes compliance with 10 CFR Appendix B to Part 50: Quality Assurance Criteria for Nuclear Power Plants and Fuel Reprocessing Plants. This CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) requires that conditions adverse to quality be promptly identified and reported. All bugs in Abaqus are conditions adverse to quality, but potentially serious bugs are clearly the most severe and hence receive special treatment.

A bug is potentially serious if it may cause an experienced analyst to believe the behavior of Abaqus to be accurate when it may in fact be inaccurate in an engineering sense. Quality Monitoring Service customers receive email notification of such errors, sent on a regular, monthly schedule.

Annual QA Audit

An internal audit is conducted annually of the Abaqus Quality Management System. The purpose of the audit is to ensure that Abaqus complies with the provisions of the ISO 9001:2000 standard. Quality Monitoring Service customers receive a copy of the annual audit report, as well as copies of all follow-up correspondence that documents the response of Abaqus to major audit findings, if any.

Right to Audit

Quality Monitoring Service customers have the right to visit SIMULIA headquarters annually to audit the Quality Management System themselves or to have their own contractors perform such quality audits. Abaqus covers its own costs for staffing, copying, etc. in cooperating with such audits. The customer is responsible for its auditor's costs.

We ask that reasonable notification of such audit visits be provided and that flexibility be shown in choosing dates so that the appropriate personnel are available to support the auditors.

For Quality Monitoring Service-related question, please email us at Simulia.qa-service@3ds.com.

Additional Resources

>> Quality Assurance Background

To learn of potentially serious Abaqus error reports login to My Support. This answer is only available to customers with support.
>> See Answer 908 [Login required]

To report a suspected error in an Abaqus product
>> See Answer 1654 

>> How can we improve?