The importance of quality at FGM Dental Group
The quality control process at FGM is differentiated, specialized and effective.
Delivering a quality product to our customers requires study, commitment, method and investment. At FGM Dental Group, the sectors involved with product quality and customer service analyze each detail of the process to guarantee costumer satisfaction and deliver the best result.
Besides correcting flaws that may occur in the productive process, the work of the quality control team also results in the prevention of potential flaws. Commercializing high quality products that fulfill the need and expectations of the customer is an important value for FGM and critical for a company that is the market leader and is expanding its business to new territories.
Quality control in the productive process.
Opposite to what many imagine, quality control is not only at the end of the manufacturing process. In fact, it is present since the beginning, when the product is still in the planning phase, and continues to follow the manufacturing process up to final packaging. For each type of product, there is a methodology to be applied and, for each phase of the productive process, there is a different team to test the product.
“At FGM, all products are 100% tested, some are analyzed one by one and others through sampling”, explains Gisela Cristina Nass de Andrade, Manager of Quality Assurance and Process Engineering. Each day, countless tests are applied to guarantee that the final product fulfills its objective. Some of those products, such as implants and bone grafts, need to undergo rigorous control in their critical production phases and, that way, they are tested one by one in several phases of the process.
In the implants sector, dimensional and functional tests are applied with the use of devices and visual control. In the esthetic dentistry sector, among the processes observed by the quality control teams are: density, raw-materials, consistency, color and other physical-chemical characteristics that the materials need to fulfill in order to perform as intended.
Quality control in customer service
In order to guarantee that the product quality fulfills the demand of the customer, the FGM Customer Relations Central keeps contact with customers in Brazil and abroad. “All the interactions with customers are recorded in our system, independently from the channel used. We are able to keep track of the information and, in a strategic way, create actions after the analysis of the compilation of the data in order to avoid new demands for a situation already dealt with,” explains Katley Smaha Provin Aguilera, coordinator of Customer Relations. Besides, the Customer Relations Central is always in search of an 100% customer feedback rate, indicating which action was taken in relation to the interaction, guaranteeing that their issue has been followed up and taken care of.
The Customer Relations Central also aims at listening to customers, in a preventive and spontaneous way, by means of customer satisfaction surveys, which are carried out monthly for the purchases done directly from FGM (in the case of implants), from the purchase to the usability after a certain period of use. That way, the whole customer experience is monitored. A great advantage of the FGM Customer Relations Central is the existence of a team of customer service consultants and analysts who are qualified to provide good service, besides a technical team formed by specialized professional dentists who, besides answering questions, instruct customers on the correct use of the products for better results.
Registrations and certifications
FGM Dental Group has been certified domestically and internationally. Among the main certifications are: Certificação de Boas Práticas de Fabricação (CBPF) – Certification of Manufacturing Best Practices – issued by the Brazilian National Sanitary Agency (Anvisa), which has the purpose of guaranteeing that the processes in the company fulfill the sanitary requirements for the manufacture and commercialization, in the domestic market, of medical products of high and maximum risk. Another certification is the ISO 13485, related to the Quality Management System for medical products, in which FGM Dental Products is certified by the British Standards Institution (BSI), the leader in global certification, assuring the high level of the quality of the manufacturing processes.
Among the certifications of products, what stands out is the European conformity seal (CE). “That certification is very rigorous and encompasses several aspects of the product’s life cycle, from the design, to manufacturing to the post-market monitoring”, explains Tiago Ribeiro, manager for Regulatory Issues and Quality Management. That certification has been granted to several lines of products manufactured and commercialized by the FGM Dental Group, such as adhesives, composites, cements, Arcsys implants and the Nanosynt biomaterial. From the regulatory point of view, our products have been evaluated by several health authorities throughout the world, in Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa and in the United States, proving that the products fulfill the safety and efficacy requirements according to the local legislation of each country.
