Rocky Brands Inc. was founded in 1932 and has grown organically into a global leader in the apparel and footwear market. Their family of brands design, manufacture and market premium quality outdoor, work, western, duty and military footwear, apparel and accessories. Their continued commitment to innovation has been the foundation of their reputation for performance, quality and comfort.
Rocky Brands has its headquarters in Nelsonville, Ohio and has manufacturing facilities in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and employ over 2,300 people worldwide.
The Challenge
Before using Certainty Software, Quality Assurance (QA), Layered Process (LPA), Verification and Lean Manufacturing audit data collection was done by hand. Audit results were then manually keyed into Excel to produce the Quality Management reports and charts needed.
Audit data collection, sorting, entry and reporting was enormously time-consuming, had a delay of about a day or two and was a full-time job for one of their associates. This process also required filing and storage space for all the paperwork, and data entry was prone to human error which led to inaccurate reporting – all of which meant that it was essential for Rocky Brands to find a more efficient and reliable way to collect, manage and report their audit data and in a way that could be implemented consistently and easily across their business.
The Solution & Result
Once Rocky Brands began using Certainty Software as the solution to these problems, they were able to reduce – by 70% – the hours needed for their quality audit data collection, collating and reporting. They now have real-time access to consistent, comparable and actionable Quality Management metrics across their business.
The solution has worked so well that Rocky Brands is now exploring additional uses for Certainty and recently expanded the use of Certainty to their Safety, Maintenance, and Engineering Departments to manage safety audits and facility and equipment inspections.
For Rocky Brands, the ability to have audit and inspection data on demand is such a huge benefit across so many departments. In their Quality Assurance Department, they have twelve different associates performing a variety of audits, assessments and inspections all on their tablets – all using Certainty.
Certainty has enabled Rocky Brands to reduce the person-hours required for data collection, collating and reporting by over 70%. Certainty also provides all that is needed to collect, compare and report – in real time – consistent, accurate and actionable audit and inspection metrics from multiple departments across their business.
“Before Certainty, data entry was time-consuming and prone to human error which led to inaccurate reporting.”
