UK frozen green vegetables supplier Christian Salvesen Foods, has implemented the mobile auditing software solution Quickfire in a bid to improve efficiency and meet both industry-wide and retailer-specific standards.
Quickfire, produced by Muddy Boots Software Limited, is the first auditing software that can be uploaded onto a laptop or hand-held device enabling inspectors to record data as they complete the assessment.
Given Christian Salvesen Foods processes, packs and distributes 95,000 tonnes of vegetables a year to the retail, foodservice and food manufacturing industries, contributed by more than 250 growers on a daily basis, efficiency in data handling is crucial, according to the company’s agricultural technical manager, Sarah Pettitt.
She said: “The sheer volume of vegetables we deal with on a daily basis means our auditing procedure needs to be efficient and to the highest standard. Muddy Boots has provided us with a solution that compacts the assessments into a one- hit, one-capture system, which is fantastic from the auditors’ point of view.”
The Quickfire system is far superior to the former paper-based system of auditing, Pettit, pictured, continued: “Auditors had different styles that meant there was no consistency in the results; handwriting was difficult to read, which caused problems as the office-based workers inputted the data, resulting in the whole process taking a considerable amount of time. After recording, the data would be pulled into a report and a list of corrective actions would be identified for the producer, which all together took some 40 or 50 per cent longer.”
Jonathan Evans, managing director of Muddy Boots, said the system is being geared further towards the problem of overlap between retailer standards by creating bolt-on audits, which are additional shorter assessments that only include questions that are different from the initial standard audit.
