Why did you look for a digital solution?
"We used to walk the production rounds so cumbersomely. We walked the rounds, took pictures and entered everything into an Excel file we built ourselves. A score would come out of that, but it took a lot of extra work. We would send in the Excel file, but the photos were not visible to production, for example. As a result, production staff never really found out which points we were struggling with. And then we thought: that should be easier and take less time."
You really get a lot more insight. Not only by department, but also by topic.
— StarCuisine, Normec Foodcare
You now inspect with the inspection app. What are the differences from the old way of working?
"We have now split the major production rounds into separate lists for the different departments. That way each department can see what's going on via the report, including photos and additional comments. That just works a lot nicer, faster and clearer. In production itself you notice that employees really get going when they receive the report. They look at the report, see the pictures and try to resolve it as quickly as possible. They are more motivated to take actions. Now we send the report to all departments. We want to move toward giving the departments all their own login to the QA Software, so they can resolve the discrepancies themselves, but we are not at that point yet."
How has digitization benefited the organization?
"We have certainly saved time by working with this module, but more importantly we have also made the information more visual. And I think that's actually even more important than the time savings. The frequency of inspection rounds has been increased by using the Inspections module. We used to run a round once a month. Now we run them weekly, so we can also see the scores weekly. The scores have generally gone up a bit because of this. We can see better what is going wrong. Because you can see statistics directly, it is easier for the management and ourselves to see what points we need to pay attention to. Should we pay more attention to general hygiene or personal hygiene? And how are we doing with filling out the registration forms? In this way the management also sees which registrations are going well and which are not. They know better which subjects to focus on. You really get much more insight. Not only per department, but also per subject."
"The scores have generally gone up a bit because of this. We can see better what's going wrong."
— Starcuisine, over Normec Foodcare online
How do employees experience the increased inspection frequency?
"Of course, it is still the case that you are inspecting the work. Beforehand, I did worry that people would think we were checking too much. But our colleagues actually see it more as a challenge. The moment you walk into the department you can already hear them say, 'This time we have a hundred percent huh'."
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