|
|
QuaTIS Food - Quality Management
Bringing New Transparency to the Entire Food Production Chain
Today, consumers have a loss of confidence in food production, the associated supply chain and the
food industries ability to supply sustainable safe products. That loss has been caused by several
reasons, which include major food scares like BSE, use of hormones, pesticide contamination and
risks associated with genetically modified organisms (GMO). With products travelling farther
between farm and table than ever before, food safety gets a new dimension and impact on public
health and is no longer a local, but a global and worldwide concern.
fig. 1: Positioning of QuaTIS Food
Food Safety from Farm to Fork - QuaTIS Food is a unique food quality and food safety management
system, which brings new transparency and integrity to the entire food production chain. This
integrated solution for the food industry includes pre-defined national and international quality
standards (BRC, HACCP, ISO 9001, GMP+, IFS, etc.) as well as the flexibility for the definition of
specific and advanced configurations. It is designed to be used by certifiers and producers as well
as authorities.
All use cases and workflows for monitoring, auditing and certification of food production chains
including all attached products, processes and partners (customers, suppliers, producers, labs,
auditors, service providers, authorities, etc.) can be designed. The modular structure and manifold
configuration options allow the usage for different product types, supply chains and processes in
the food industries. The integrated traceability for products and their components across all
manufacturing stages (production, processing, distribution) complies the European laws and
regulations for food traceability. All this features address the food safety concerns and allow
effective and efficient actions for risk management and the transparency of quality monitoring and
check results.
Quality management with QuaTIS Food is carried out project specific and can be divided into the
following phases:
- Concept Stage:
The concept stage involves the following activities: definition of the basis of valuation,
definition of the food production chain, selection of the quality standard, creation of the
requirement and target specification for system audits, creation of the test and analysis plans for
product audits, assignment of laboratories
- Evaluation and Verification Stage (Examination and Re-Examination):
This stage involves the planning and execution of site inspections, collection and analysis of test
results, creation of the test report, collection of data about product movement for batch
tracing
- Issue of Certificates for the specified period
The respective project stages are supported by the following modules and functions:
- Collection and analysis of samples with corresponding documentation on activities, planning of
laboratory tests, transfer of measured values from laboratory, comparison of measured values to
established limits
- Controller for automated project, activity and assignment control, observation of laboratory
tests and advance warning functionality for compliance with promised quality and established
limits
- Core functionality like master data for companies, test modules, product types, events for
product types, workflow management, user management, differentiated authorisation management with
an authorisation matrix for users and groups (roles) , document management for arbitrary document
types, rendering of the document types to PDF, administration and maintaining process instructions
(standard of procedures)
- Planning modules for project planning, appointment scheduling and yearly planning for
certifiers, auditors, laboratories, etc.
- Observation and supervision of certificates and labels. Queries of origin and test results of
products, parts of products and all product components
- Localisation through multi language user interface, expandable at runtime (currently: English,
German, French)
- Secure Web-access for external employees, auditors, laboratories, consumers, etc.
- Interfaces (XML) to Laboratory Information Systems (LIMS) for electronic transfer of test
results, to the German database of animal origin (Herkunftsinformationssystem Tiere - HIT) and to
internal accounting system for billing
- Extensive reporting functionality for all user groups in Excel, Word, PDF, HTML and XML
formats
- Web-based consumer information system with limited access to consumer relevant data
- Interface to statistical evaluation tools, OLAP (future option)
fig. 2: QuaTIS Food Architecture
QuaTIS Food is implemented using a multi-tier architecture based on J2EE. No additional costs for
database systems, web and application servers due to consequent use of open source software.
QuaTIS Food has been developed during 2002/2003 by Software Factory GmbH. Development has been
supported by the Bayerische Staatskanzlei (Bavarian State Chancellery) with funds from the
subsidies program Information and Communication Technologies (Förderprogramm Informations- und
Kommunikationstechnik) by the country of Bavaria. If you have any question or suggestion about the
QuaTIS Quality Management System, do not hesitate to contact us. |
|
