Exceeding Quality and Cost Targets While Meeting Unprecedented Demand

About the Company

With a mission to track, and ultimately curb, the spread of infectious illness, Kinsa is led by executives with high-tech experience in healthcare, consumer products, consumer health, and public health organizations.

As the first FDA-cleared smart thermometer, Kinsa dominates the market with over 2.5 million thermometers distributed through more than 10,000 stores nationwide. Consumers who choose to pair their Kinsa smart thermometer with Kinsa’s mobile application receive personalized guidance to direct them to care and services in their moments of need. Furthermore, utilizing data from its network of smart thermometers, Kinsa has developed two early warning systems—Kinsa Insights and Healthweather.us. These systems track in real time where there are unusual levels of fever—above and beyond what would be expected from normal cold and flu.

Models developed in collaboration with prominent scientists can predict, at the county level, where illness spikes will occur up to 12 weeks in advance, making Kinsa’s system the most accurate to track the spread of infectious illness in the United States.

AT A GLANCE

SYSTEM USED

Arena QMS

Best Thing About Arena

Single, unified system for product, quality, and training management

Bottom-Line Impact

Met unprecedented demand due to COVID-19 pandemic and exceeded quality and cost targets

Key Benefits

Productivity gain of 10x
Met 4x growth in pandemic demand while maintaining product quality and cost overheads
Global supplier management (approved suppliers, supplier audits, and supplier quality)
Maintain compliance with FDA and international quality system requirements
Zendesk CRM integration cut RMA cycles from 30 minutes to 30 seconds

BUSINESS CHALLENGES

Kinsa, like many early-stage companies, began by tracking product and quality information, including customer complaints, using a tool that was already installed on everyone’s laptop: Microsoft Office. But quickly, the company realized a need for more scalable solutions to support product lifecycle management (PLM) and quality management. “We are a small, flexible team; we wanted systems in place early for scalability and efficiency as well as meeting regulatory requirements,” explained Srikant Mantha, Vice President of Hardware Operations.

THE SOLUTION

After extensive research of viable solutions, Kinsa selected Arena to fulfill their needs. Arena’s productcentric quality management system (QMS) manages quality and product information in a single, secure system. This seamless end-to-end PLM and QMS solution enhanced Kinsa’s capabilities in the following key areas:

Quality assurance processes
Arena has provided Kinsa with the infrastructure needed for full quality management and training record management, giving the company the ability to manage these critical product-related processes in a single, unified system.
New product development
Arena has allowed Kinsa to more efficiently develop multiple products with complex electrical, mechanical, software, and IoT components. Kinsa utilizes Arena to track all documentation for product requirements and specifications, product design, design verification and validation, risk management, and manufacturing processes. In addition, Arena provides clear traceability of all engineering change orders with full details of each change including the rationale for the change, approvers, sign-off/release, and implementation.
Supplier management
Kinsa, with suppliers and manufacturing partners around the world, needed a solution to manage suppliers and supplier quality. Arena provides Kinsa with a complete solution to manage approved suppliers, supplier audits, and supplier quality. In the event of a supplier nonconformance, Arena provides Kinsa with the capabilities to track all actions and associated records from initiation of the nonconformance to resolution and disposition. Suppliers can also be configured with access to Arena so they can easily access documents, change orders, and nonconformances related to the services they provide to Kinsa.

Streamlined customer support and complaints processes

Streamlining the customer complaint process, where regulatory requirements demand a high level of traceability and transparency, was a high priority for Kinsa. “We are an FDA-cleared company. Product defects must be traced from each customer complaint through to resolution,” noted Mantha.

With the adoption of Arena, Kinsa began tracking customer complaints—which provided easier visibility than previous manual processes. But, there was still a manual step between their Zendesk system for support tickets and Arena customer complaint management. The Arena-FlowEQ Zendesk integration solved this manual challenge.

Kinsa’s customer support team can now quickly escalate a ticket to a product customer complaint when needed. The integration allows customer support to create a customer complaint record in Arena from within Zendesk, where the customer support team works every day. “It is all super easy now and has cut our RMA process down from 30 minutes to about 30 seconds. It is a one-button action in Zendesk to create an Arena customer complaint object with all the relevant fields imported right from Zendesk,” said Mantha. “Putting the integration in place was simple, FlowEQ has been excellent to work with and very responsive, and the integration and the workflow process are dialed in and automated.” As a cloud-tocloud integration, FlowEQ is provided as an applet through CRM app stores (currently including Zendesk and Salesforce). Customers download, configure with Arena credentials, map fields, and begin using it.

Blue quote mark

With Arena, we have a unified product lifecycle and quality management solution in an easy-to-use interface, providing us a systematic way for handling document control, product changes, and quality reporting.”

—Srikant Mantha, Vice President of Hardware Operations, Kinsa

Photo of mother and daughter using Kinsa thermometer

Photo of father and daughter using Kinsa thermometer and App

RESULTS

Arena has provided Kinsa with a complete end-to-end solution for product lifecycle and quality management. It has allowed Kinsa to scale the business, improve efficiency, and maintain compliance with FDA and international quality system requirements for medical devices. The intuitive workspaces and flexible configuration (including a secure and easily accessible cloud-based solution and integration with other business systems) have improved communication and overall product quality.

Kinsa’s early implementation of Arena helped the company be prepared for the unprecedented demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic and ultimately thrive. “During the pandemic, demand soared to more than four times the pre-pandemic levels, requiring Kinsa to quickly react with increased manufacturing and distribution,” stated Mantha. “Arena PLM and QMS ensured that Kinsa was able to quickly scale to meet demand while maintaining quality and do so while maintaining operations and customer support overhead costs to less than 5% of the overall cost of goods sold.”

Empowering Future Innovation

As Kinsa continues to change the world with innovative, connected products, Arena provides a controlled, scalable foundation for product and quality processes. “With Arena, we have a unified product lifecycle and quality management solution in an easy-to-use interface, providing us a systematic way for handling document control, product changes, and quality reporting,” said Mantha. The key for Kinsa has been to approach their product and quality management needs the same as their product—with passion, working fast and smart. As the company grows, Kinsa can rely on Arena to empower the Kinsa team to deliver life-changing products to curb the spread of illness.