Three ways in. One CycleQA.
A summer note from CycleQA — and the first time we're putting names to what we build. Not every company needs the same CycleQA. Here's how to tell which one is yours.
Until now, CycleQA has been one thing to everyone who asked: a QMS. That was never quite the full picture. Not every company that needs traceability also needs automated testing. Not every company that needs automated testing also needs someone to integrate their own instrument stack. Building all of that as one undifferentiated product meant either overbuilding for the company that just needs the basics right, or underbuilding for the company whose setup doesn't fit anyone's shelf.
So this summer, we're doing something we haven't done before: naming the three ways into CycleQA, and telling you plainly which one is probably yours.
We're not going to tell you which is "best." There isn't one. There's the one that fits where your company actually is right now.
CQA-CORE — the record that holds
CQA-CORE is the full QMS: traceability between NCRs, products, and calibration records, all the way through. No automated test execution, no instrument integration — just the system of record that makes sure the chain from a nonconformance back to the calibration certificate of the gauge that measured it is always there, always fast to produce, and never dependent on someone's memory or a spreadsheet that only one person understands.
Who this is for: picture a 40-person precision-parts subcontractor supplying brackets and housings to medtech and industrial customers. Quality has always been taken seriously on the shop floor — but the paper trail lives across Excel sheets, binders, and whoever's been there longest. It works, until an audit or a customer asks for the full chain on a specific part, and "give us a few days" isn't the answer anyone wants to give. CQA-CORE turns that into an answer you can give in the room.
CQA-AUTO — CORE, plus testing that runs itself
CQA-AUTO starts from everything in CORE and adds built-in support for scheduled, automated testing — with a growing list of instruments supported out of the box: multimeters, PSUs, oscilloscopes, and more. If your test bench is standard gear, CQA-AUTO is ready to run against it without a custom integration project. No adaptation, no development sprint on your side — you schedule the test, CycleQA runs it and logs the result against the right product and requirement.
Who this is for: picture an electronics test house running routine bench validation — the same sequence, on the same standard instruments, every shift. Today that means a technician manually stepping through it and writing results down by hand. Reliable, but slow, and every manual step is a place for a transcription error to hide. CQA-AUTO takes the manual part away without asking you to change your instruments or write a line of integration code.
CQA-ENTERPRISE — built around what you already have
CQA-ENTERPRISE is for the company whose test setup won't fit on anyone's off-the-shelf list — because it's genuinely their own: a custom combination of instruments, in-house or partner-built hardware, and workflows that need to be integrated rather than selected from a menu. This tier brings in CycleQA's own consulting work and dedicated partners to build that integration around your setup, not the other way around.
Who this is for: picture a coastal surveillance company collecting sensor data from a network of edge IoT nodes along the coastline, fusing readings from multiple sensor types into a single operational picture. There's no shelf list that covers that. What they need is a QMS that can be integrated into a pipeline that's genuinely theirs — and a partner who'll do that integration work with them. That's CQA-ENTERPRISE.
Which one is yours?
If you read the CORE example and thought "that's basically us today" — that's usually the right starting point, whatever you grow into later. If you read AUTO and thought "we already have the instruments, we just want the manual part gone" — that's probably you. If you read ENTERPRISE and thought "our setup doesn't look like anyone else's" — that's the conversation worth having.
Traceability between NCRs, products, and calibration records. The system of record, nothing more.
CORE, plus scheduled automated testing on off-the-shelf instruments. No adaptation needed.
Your own instrument stack, integrated — with CycleQA's people and partners doing the work.
We're opening up a small number of pilot slots this summer — a 3-month onboarding period, into whichever of the three tiers actually fits your situation. If that's you, get in touch and let's find out together.
Good tools make doing it right faster than doing it wrong.
— Markus Hein, CycleQA
Not sure which one is yours?
We read every response personally — tell us a bit about your setup and we'll help you figure it out.