In November 2018, there were seven different recalls of assorted animal feed and pet food reported by the AVMA website. That's about two per week! As peoples’ attachment to their pets keeps growing and individuals want to feel more connected to their food sources, quality control in feed is becoming more important every day. However, quality control is also the source of a great deal of time, effort and cost to many producers. How do you improve the efficiency of your quality control process without increasing your overhead costs? One option to consider is improving your Quality Control software.
The importance of quality control
When you are active in the feed and food industry, you are responsible for the quality of the products you deliver. Quality control should therefore be of vital concern to your operation. This requires constant monitoring of the quality and regulatory compliance of the raw materials at intake, the partially-completed products during the production run and the completed feed or food that you deliver to your customers. Unfortunately, the cost of quality control can be prohibitive, requiring efficiency in quality control.
In a world where regular food and feed recalls has become the norm, consistently providing a high-quality product is one way to stand out in the marketplace and gain a reputation for excellence. This requires risk assessments and implementation of a quality control process through your entire production process. In the real world, this will also determine the number of samples taken at various stages of production, as well as during the storage and delivery of your products. This process generates massive amounts of data to process, evaluate and analyze, and requires the right tools to get the job done quickly, effectively and efficiently.
Is your software up to the task?
One of the best toolboxes available to your company is the Quality Control software you are using. If your Quality Control software is out of date or can't keep up with the amount of data you need to feed into it, your company can quickly fall behind in the process. Subsequently your related costs for processing those samples will go up significantly as labor costs increase through time. To quickly process and evaluate the data without having workers spending hours scrolling through pages of data that have no bearing on the final outcome, you need effective software to automate the process and allow you to learn and develop your process from the start.
There are a few areas that can help your software perform more effectively. Consider centralizing all of your quality control data into a single database. Automate your test schedule application. Define your sampling plan in clear, concise language. Allow your logistics software to determine when it's best to pull your samples, such as your ERP or warehouse software. Allow your software to automatically evaluate outliers and send automated messages to stakeholders. Draw in all data sources for your analytics through user-friendly dashboards.
Adifo's BESTMIX Quality Control
Though these areas will help your existing software work more efficiently, they can be difficult to apply across the board unless you have the right software in place to make this process run as effortless as possible. Adifo's BESTMIX Quality Control software is able to address every one of these best practices, providing you with a more efficient solution to your QC needs. With a number of different automated communications options that interact with your production software, service labs, NIR instrumentation and ERP systems, you can have your best system now. Curious about how we can help you improve efficiency? Contact us to chat about how we'll take you there.