Aptean Food & Beverage QA Management (UK)

Aptean Food & Beverage Management

Are paper-based QA processes holding you back? Work smarter and get audit ready with Aptean’s Food & Beverage QA Management solution and digitise your QA processes.

With flexible, scalable, out-of-the-box capabilities, you can achieve greater cost savings, improve how you manage compliance and audit requirements and empower your teams to make dynamic, business critical decisions.

Solving Today’s QA Challenges Through Digitalisation.

Operationally, food safety systems are being increasingly tested because of more stringent regulations, high customer purchasing standards and skills shortages. And now, with retail standards and industry audits focusing on clear outcomes, it’s essential that food manufacturers are equipped with proactive tools to pre-empt and mitigate likely issues on the factory floor, as well as maintaining an efficient and transparent audit system.

Based on three decades’ experience, working directly with food manufacturers, Aptean understands the critical role of QA in the food industry, and uses digitalisation to deliver superior QA integrity. From raw materials to outbound retail products our QA Management solution drives legal and compliance checks in real time, with flags, escalation and line stop capability, preventing significant food safety issues from ever leaving the factory.

Real-time data capture on the factory floor data, via android mobile devices, rugged tablets, touchscreens, and PCs, provides evidence that all quality checks have been made at the correct time and place. And by leveraging real-time data insights and analytics, your teams are enabled to make dynamic business decisions, identify new ways to improve yield, reduce waste and avoid costly product recalls.

Five Ways Aptean’s QA Management Solution Can Improve Your Process Control and Integrity:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Shows how many checks are being performed when they are happening and identifies any non-conformances.

Provides evidence that operators have carried out the correct checks and at the prescribed time intervals, by scanning at critical control points (CCPs) throughout your food factory.

Puts stock on hold at any food manufacturing stage, for follow up QA checks.

Controls quarantined items, to prevent cross-contamination and manage any rejects.

Minimises non-compliances, for both customer and regulatory standards, through digital validation and safeguarding.

Minimise Administration Time and Maximise Reporting Value

With instant data retrieval, digitalised QA has the potential, for large enterprises, to eliminate thousands of man-hours spent on administration. And with more time available to spend on QA review and analysis, managers can explore the new levels of digital reporting provided by Aptean’s QA and traceability software.

For example, you can review QA procedures by product code to analyse:

› How many finished products resulted in non-conformances and why?

› Were the non-conformances the result of issues with packaging specifications, recipes, raw materials, or something else?

› By understanding, the issues and patterns, what evidence-based changes should be applied and measured?

Deliver Cost Savings

For any food manufacturing business, minimising waste is a priority. But with Aptean’s QA module, once any non-conformances or issues are identified, such as variable raw material quality at intake, problems can be quickly addressed and rectified.

And, by moving away from paper-based QA, one of the hidden cost benefits is the saving that’s made against paper and ink spend. For a large enterprise, this saving can equate to several £0000s.

Avara Foods has been able to quantify a saving of 1.8 tonnes of paper per annum through digitising QA technical processes at their Telford plant.

Be Audit Ready

The increasing pressure on food processors to provide flawless audit information within set timeframes, means businesses that are still reliant on paperwork to keep compliant need to move up to digital QA to always be audit ready.

By implementing reports that can be instantly populated on demand for both customers and regulators requirements you can deliver food manufacturing audits with hours to spare.

“The auditors are always impressed with the speed and accuracy of the system. We can produce records in seconds and the auditors can drill down to see everything – it’s all there.”

Neil Edwards, Operations Director, Bearfields of London

Aptean QA Management for Food and Beverage Manufacturers

› Real-time auto-alerts and non-conformance management, delivered in a range of formats and channels including email and SMS.

› Centralised reporting and dashboards.

› Forms based application with built in condition-based workflows.

› Intuitive and user-friendly, with drop-down menus, colour coded answers, in-built calculations.

› Permissions based form with signature sign off, designed to reinforce strict version control and adherence to BRC standards.

› Interoperability with third-party ERP and factory systems.

Design, Test and Deploy Bespoke Digital Procedures

Whilst you may be bound by the conformance of industry standards you have your own unique operational environment. Aptean QA Designer empowers quality management teams to digitise their own digital food factory procedures throughout a food processing environment – from intake checks right through to packaging.

From simple checks, tests and inspections to complex procedures, teams can build forms and design workflows, inclusive of specific parameters for non-conformation management, to stimulate remedial action to take place.

And to maintain audit diligence, the elimination of paper-based procedures ensures efficient archiving and retrieval.

› Capture photographs, voice recordings, temperature, weight checks and much more.

› Set mandatory and optional questions, then select the data input methods that best suit your food factory.

› Define tolerances for each QA question.

› Automatically raise non-conformances whenever results fall outside of tolerances, such as temperatures and weights ranges, or conditions.

› Using our own laboratory sampling application, capture batch samples and log lab test results.

› Trigger external actions to generate SQL procedures. For example, in the case of glass being discovered, automatically hold stock until a full check can be conducted.

› Whenever changes are applied to procedures and inspection checklists, ensure archive is maintained for audit control.

“One of the major benefits of digitalisation, is even higher levels of consistent quality and improved traceability.”

Tariq Habib, Interim Programme Manager, Finnebrogue Artisan

Bi-Directional Traceability

Within food manufacturing, ensuring that your traceability matches the expectations of auditors, is a major challenge. To make this simple, Aptean embeds traceability compliance within the audit management capabilities.

The digital and dynamic traceability reporting is proven to deliver audit traces in seconds. Moreover, through backwards and forwards traceability, you will have proof to demonstrate that each carcass, raw material type or ingredient used, can be matched to the finished products at the end of the processing line.

› Provide seamless traceability across all areas of the food factory.

› Digitally track and accounts for every raw material and product – from intake, batch, stock, value-added production, packing, through to distribution.

› Gain full traceability and mass balance reporting in seconds, or whenever the auditor calls.

› Supports consignment mixing, throughout all process and packing phases.

“Thanks to the traceability that the SI system provides, using the featured trace ID and batch code on the finished product label, auditing traces take seconds to complete. In fact, one auditor stated that in her 30 years’ experience, auditing within the meat industry, she’d never encountered individual primal traceability before”.

Michelle Kennedy, Chief Operating Officer, Farmison & Co

Why Aptean QA Management?

› Empower your QA experts to design, test and deploy your own digital procedures.

› Eliminate paper-based QA reporting and ensure unbroken bi-directional traceability for auditing purposes.

› With our instant data retrieval and dynamic reporting, provide seamless traceability throughout the food factory.

› Digitally track and account for everything – from intake, batch, stock, value-added production, packing, through to distribution.

› Deliver flawless audit data in minutes, including mass balance reporting in seconds,

Are

About Aptean

Aptean is one of the world’s leading providers of purpose-built, industry-specific software that helps manufacturers and distributors effectively run and grow their businesses. With both cloud and on-premise deployment options, Aptean’s products, services and unmatched expertise help businesses of all sizes to be Ready for What’s Next, Now®. Aptean is headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia and has offices in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.