Quality Assurance (QA) plays an important role in the Food & Beverage industry. Consumers expect to consistently receive quality products day-in day-out. A commitment to quality assurance is critical for any food producer’s success. It also should be noted that quality assurance is an ongoing effort and not a one-time activity. It needs to be practiced every day to achieve the desired outcomes on an ongoing basis. So, exactly how does this get done?

The good news is there are some incredible software solutions that are simple to use and easy on the budget to help. Choosing a solution, however, can be a little daunting. Let’s take a look at some critical features a quality assurance software solution should have.

Key Features

• Quality Assurance software needs to easily turn your quality control data into a goldmine of actionable business intelligence
• It should help you reveal trends; deliver cost-saving insights
• Your QA-QC solution should have a tight integration with your WMS/SCE system for a complete quality assurance program across your entire supply chain
• It should have a User-Friendly interface to build custom digital forms quickly
• A solid QA solution should quickly quantify what’s wrong with one supplier’s products, or another vendor’s packaging for example
• It should give you the power to mine your data yourself, without costly consultants or ISO audits
• And last but not least, it should run on hardware agnostic mobile technologies

 

4 Reasons to Use a QA Software Solution

1. Process and Workflow Automation
Quality and process go hand-in-hand. A QA software solution improves efficiency and accuracy by automating repetitive chores and creating dependencies that trigger appropriate actions in the proper sequence. Minimize keypunches with smart, intuitive, interactive software that supports: automatic data collection from most IP scales and other sensors, barcode readers, bulk data import/export via MS SQL Server and CSV, and more.

2. Metrics and Analysis
You can now reveal trends, discover cost-saving insights, quantify recurring issues and turn your quality control data into a goldmine of business intelligence. With the power to mine your own data without costly consultants or ISO audits, you’ll reap immediate gains in proactive process improvement, labor efficiency and management decision-making. Now you can know the instant a trend is tipping south in real time – before product failure can endanger the health of consumers, your relationship with customers, or your bottom line.

3. Regulatory Compliance
A big advantage is you can now fix your filing and audit problems forever. With a solid QA solution, you can have a critical tool for your HACCP plan, without a single file cabinet. QA software can revolutionize the way you fulfill specifications and regulations. All data will be automatically backed up daily to encrypted storage in addition to streaming all changes to several other servers typically.

4. Quality Assurance
You will now be able to enjoy safe, versatile data storage on an industry-standard SQL database for all your quality data: process controls, intake and outgo status measurements, machine conditions, maintenance procedures, food quality tests, environmental conditions, bacterial sweeps… everything. Very powerful stuff!

In Summary

Quality Assurance is by no means a simple endeavor. Yet, it is an essential component for ongoing success in any business, and especially those within the food and beverage industry.

Coolearth Software offers a Quality Assurance and Quality Control System that helps food and beverage companies improve productivity, profitability, and compliance with a flexible, user-friendly software platform that captures, manages and analyzes real-time operations data. Learn more at https://www.coolearth.com.