Locations
Europe
Deutsche Tiernahrung Cremer has more than 725 employees. Its core activity includes the production of compound feed for all types of livestock, next to feed for companion and hobby animals such as horses, rabbits, rodents as well as dogs and cats. Its portfolio includes leading brands such as deuka, Club and Nordkraft these are known and appreciated by farmers in Germany and other neighboring European countries. As the NIR manager and key user of BESTMIX® Quality Control, Ruven Treude plays a central role within the quality control process.
With an annual production of 2,5 million tons, Deutsche Tiernahrung Cremer is the largest private manufacturer of compound feed in Germany. Frequent changing recipes for feed produced at 13 locations: This makes quality control a complex task. “Managing tolerances and analytical schemes used to be a full-time job. Now that we have entrusted most of these tasks to BESTMIX® Quality Control, we are making considerable gains in terms of time and efficiency. The fact that BESTMIX® Software knows the specificity of our sector, clearly makes the difference.
What preceded…
For a long time already, we are working with BESTMIX® Recipe Management in order to formulate our recipes”, explains Ruven Treude. “Around seven years ago, we scanned the market for quality control software. Most providers were focusing on labs or simple production. They didn’t meet our frequent changing recipes, nor the multitude of production locations. BESTMIX® Quality Control - still known under the brand name ‘BESTMIX® LIMS’ at the time - did meet our specific needs however. The experience with BESTMIX® Recipe Management had already taught us that the employees of BESTMIX® Software understand our sector quite well.
The workflow
When the intake or production process starts, BESTMIX®Quality Control bundles the required samples into an analytical scheme. This scheme tells the employees which samples to take and immediately links them with the appropriate labels. Each label indicates which lab tests are required at which location - in-house or externally. “It's a system we can rely on”, explains Ruven Treude. “With our extended product portfolio and various locations, it allows us to make considerable gains in terms of time and efficiency.”
BESTMIX®Quality Control transfers the tolerances to the NIR device available at each location and checks if the results are within those. Consequently, the quality employee can immediately see between which margins the specifications must lie. “In case of a slight deviation, we send the sample to the lab for further analysis,” explains Ruven Treude. “If the aberration is too big, a refusal or separate processing will immediately follow.” BESTMIX®Quality Control also allows to access the analysis results at a later stage of the production cycle.
The update matrix functionality
“Our raw materials have different qualities depending upon their origin, the weather, the season in case of byproducts also technical treatment” Ruven Treude explains.
The update matrix function allows us to transfer the results of an evaluation from BESTMIX®Quality Control into BESTMIX®Recipe-Management with just a few clicks. Thereby, it can be selected whether the results should be transferred to the value for all locations or as an overlay only for one location. Previously, an adjustment was much more time-consuming and was therefore carried out less frequently.
The user experience
Ruven Treude has been working with BESTMIX®Quality Control for seven years. Moreover, as a user, he was one of the inventors of several new functionalities and optimizations within the software tool. “There has been a great interaction between BESTMIX® Software and us as a customer. Potential additions we identify, often result in a software update, which BESTMIX® Software will subsequently also roll out as a standard solution to its customers. Therefore, we can surely speak of a partnership, instead of a classic customer-supplier relationship. Thus BESTMIX® Quality Control covers our needs excellently.”
Ruven Treude has noticed that BESTMIX® Quality Control replaces the work of a full-time employee thanks to the combination of the automatically generated analytical schemes and the smoothly adaptable tolerances. As the key user, Ruven also provides internal trainings with this quality control software. “However, when I have questions or experience problems, I can always rely on the BESTMIX® Software team. It’s nice to collaborate with a company thinking along with us and knowing our market extremely well.”