Dairy Crest is the UK’s leading chilled dairy foods company, manufacturing a range of everyday dairy brands including Cathedral City cheddar, Clover spread, Country Life butter and Frijj, the top selling flavoured milk drink.
The company, based in Surrey, United Kingdom, also supplies milk to retailers throughout the country, from major supermarkets to village stores. Dairy Crest deliver milk - and much more - to thousands of homes across England and Wales every day.
The Challenge
With 15 sites around the country, establishing group-wide document control within Dairy Crest had proved labour and resource intensive, and, at the same time, posed a potential risk to processes elsewhere in the business.
At a site level, costly and time-consuming manual document control procedures were producing huge volumes of paper-based documents that were proving increasingly difficult, if not impossible to manage. Manual change control processes also required considerable time and effort in identifying staff training needs and maintaining records, which could lead to gaps developing in staff competencies.
At a group level, manually distributing documents to multiple staff, potentially at any or all of the group’s sites, was causing delays in the document approval cycle. Management were also unable to identify where bottlenecks were developing in the cycle, further lengthening delays in approving business-critical documents that included product specifications and artwork.
As the UK’s leading manufacturer of dairy products, Dairy Crest depend on their network of national and international suppliers. Maintaining visibility of issues throughout the supply chain is therefore crucial in managing risk and maintaining real business advantage within the highly competitive UK food market.
To set up a supplier audit programme that was based on real business risk, the Quality department needed to be able to carry out a central review of performance across all supplier sites. Purchasing also needed the same performance information during contract renewal negotiations with suppliers.
Each of the company’s sites needed visibility on issues to make sure that corrective and preventive actions could be completed within agreed deadlines. Each site also needed to be able to control their documents and other sitespecific information, including audit and staff competence management.
Without visibility, the company was unable to track performance at any of their supplier sites. In addition, management were unable to establish an accurate or up-to-date register of suppliers’ certification to standards such as BRC, which was having a negative impact on contract renewal negotiations.
At a group level, in centralising the management of controlled documents and supplier performance, management at Dairy Crest recognised an enterprise compliance management solution as a viable alternative to manual and paperbased management systems.
The Solution
By enabling Dairy Crest to extend their quality management system (QMS) throughout the supply chain, Q-Pulse Enterprise Edition from Gael has given Dairy Crest group-wide access to documents, as well as visibility of issues at each of the company’s sites and at each supplier site, on demand.
At a group level, with a single central repository for documentation that relevant staff can access on demand, management can make sure that controlled documents are accessible, accurate and up-to-date across the group.
With a streamlined electronic process for managing all aspects of access and change control, Q-Pulse has enabled Dairy Crest to significantly reduce document approval cycle times across all of the company’s sites. In addition, during the revision of controlled documents, Q-Pulse has enabled the company to automatically identify retraining needs, preventing gaps in staff competency.
At a site level, as well as enabling faster approvals, automated document control procedures are now helping, rather than hindering Dairy Crest’s business. By reducing the volume of paper-based documents, Q-Pulse has enabled the company’s national distribution centre in Nuneaton to eliminate paper from the QMS to become a paperless site.
The Result
At Dairy Crest, the main benefit of implementing Q-Pulse has been centralised group document control and supplier performance monitoring across all sites. As Technical Manager at Dairy Crest’s national distribution centre in Nuneaton, Heidi Gough is responsible for the company’s Food Safety and Quality Management System (FSQMS).
She said: “I’ve noticed several benefits in using an electronic FSQMS, for example, being able to link in audits to the part of the standard I’m auditing against. I also like being able to set up my audit scope to automatically flag the correct sections of BRC and other standards that we’re working to.
“Having visibility of corrective and preventive actions is great, as it means that I can see everything that’s going on, or isn’t going on, as the case may be. And with electronic non-conformances and corrective action reports, Q-Pulse can chase the completion of actions against our deadlines.
“From experience I know it’s easy to forget to review documents, but having an automated reminder makes it so much easier, which will be a big benefit to us,’ explains Heidi. “When approvals are assigned to a department on paper, it’s up to a person to chase them, but with Q-Pulse doing the chasing for you, it’s very easy to see who is – and who isn’t – closing out their actions.”
“Q-Pulse is an exceptionally useful tool for managing our FSQMS,” says Sarah Deane, Regulatory Manager at Dairy Crest Group Technical. “We’ve already embarked on building in our competence framework into the system so we can readily manage training renewals and also identify retraining needs when our controlled documents are revised.”