Those in the world of food and beverage manufacturing already know the intricacies involved with material compliance. When everything goes according to plan, suppliers create and provide certificates of analysis (COAs) that show the properties of the materials being provided. These (hopefully) match the specifications, so once shipments arrive, everything can be quickly inspected and verified for a quick turnover to production.

Unfortunately, raw material issues often creep into manufacturing processes, slowing down the supply chain and creating risk. From our perspective, each opportunity for things to go wrong also presents a chance to improve efficiency and ensure compliance goes right.

Risks from your current COA process

How many manual reviews, inspections, receipts, etc. are associated with each lot that goes through your facility? The higher that number, the higher your risks—not to mention the mountain of paperwork that can be involved. Take a look at this infographic that identifies common situations that arise, leaving manufacturers to deal with product that may be unusable or even unsafe, creating huge costs and headaches.

Advantages of a single compliance record per lot

A big part of the challenges is that preventing those issues requires working with multiple documents: COAs, specifications, tests and checks, along with other relevant information about the material. Without TraceGains, these are usually separate documents which may live in separate systems, making it hard to ensure that they all match up. Some of them may even be paper forms, making it very difficult to collect valuable data from them.

Things start to go right when we give manufacturers the power to turn all of those disparate documents in one organized electronic record. That makes it much easier to make sure that all of the elements match and, if they don’t, or if there’s some issue, it makes it easier to create Supplier Corrective Action Requests (SCARs) and make sure that they get actioned appropriately.