When the auditors call to say they are coming to review the quality system – it often leads to quite a few late nights and weekends to tidy up the data. But not for Hook Norton Brewery and their SALSA quality audit.
SALSA (Safe and Local Supplier Approval) is a quality standard for the UK food and beverage industry – orientated towards SME producers. Having SALSA accreditation provides customers with reassurance of manufacturing excellence and ingredient traceability from purchase – into products – through to distribution. SALSA is often required to trade with larger customers such as pub chains and supermarkets. SALSA covers the whole range of UK food and beverages: beer, cider, spirits, juice, dairy, cheese, ready meals, etc.
Our work with Hook Norton Brewery
We have been working with the Hook Norton brewery for a couple of years, with Andy Thomas recently providing a video testimonial about using Vos Voco for quality data collection, reporting and retrieval.
As with all customers, our engagement with Andy started with a walk through the operation. Observing the workplace and chatting with the team quickly helps us to understand the team’s needs and working environment. We look at the quality manual and forms in use.
The next step is to design a series of data collection tasks with an emphasis on making it quick and easy for the staff to collect data in real time – preferably in seconds. This is very important to ensure the team are onboard to adopt the solution.
We’ll then propose a solution alongside a fixed price quotation and implementation plan. Importantly, we’ll also provide reports in our website that allow the quality system to be managed and for the data to be retrieved – whether for internal use or when the auditors are on site.
In the video testimonial Andy mentions the workflows, which make up the solution, and how they can be easily modified or added to as needs change. We know things evolve, and so the Vos Voco App has been designed to evolve with you.
Concerned about implementing a quality system?
One of the concerns of implementing a quality system is the overhead to manage it. This can be true if data is not kept up to date and in good order. By allowing operators to collect data in seconds, in real time, and providing the means of spotting when things are not correct, this overhead is kept to a minimum. Another time saver is avoiding those late nights and weekends to prepare for an audit – or to follow up on non-conformances afterwards.
Our motivation is to help food and beverage operations to get the most from their SALSA (or other) quality system, without the time and stress of managing a lot of paper. Or put simply, improve on form-based systems that “do not quite fit” their operation.
Hooky’s SALSA auditor was pleased with the data available and Andy’s grip on it.
Many thanks Andy for the feedback, much appreciated. The testimonial can be viewed here.
David Porter, of Edwin Holden’s Bottling, is also using Vos Voco to support their SALSA quality system. He says “the search for records in seconds is a large advantage over our previous paper intensive quality system.”
We invite you to call us about your quality system
We have built in functionality to support many different requirements, such as requiring authorisations or follow up tasks. Furthermore, our pricing is based on a flat-fee per company, so it is possible to add other time saving tasks – such as customer replenishments, asset management, vehicle checks, timesheets, etc. as we go forward. Uniquely, customers and suppliers using Vos Voco can interact for quality and replenishment. No Vos Voco solution requires a major investment – we’re here to help businesses of every size benefit from digitising processes.
Get in touch
If you’d like to find out how we may be able to help, you can book a free consultation.
Alternatively, call us on 01295 330808 or email info@vosvoco.com
Derek Silby
CEO and Founder, Vos Voco
Posted on November 24, 2021