Accurate documentation is very important in the food manufacturing industry from the point of view of protecting consumer safety and the common interests of suppliers and end users. Data cleansing and standardization becomes an important consideration in this regard. Many companies in this sector utilize data cleansing services to make their data free of redundancy and duplicity. Technical documentation needs to be comprehensive and reliable if the company is to benefit financially. Food manufacturers have to keep track of numerous details such as container packaging requirements related to canning, labelling, coding, and handling.
The technical documentation would include the following:
- Specifications of components and products
- Product data sheets
- Test methods
- Work instructions
- Operating guides with illustrations and examples
- Troubleshooting instructions
- Quality inspection manuals for raw material (before use) and finished product (before shipping)
To ensure smooth processes, your master data must be clean and accurate and this will ensure food safety. A food manufacturer is always in a position to control food safety and quality whether they provide the raw packaging material, or convert and process that raw material with other substances, or manufacture the processing equipment, or add the food to the package. Documentation related to the safety checks and other details must be well-written, understandable and should ideally be accompanied with practical guidelines and illustrations. As mentioned at the beginning, data cleansing companies can help by making the master data regarding all this error-free and reliable.
Moving on to the efficient management of documents in this sector, sales order management is the first crucial step. Fax and email are commonly used to send orders. The information in these has to be incorporated into the central system. An efficient document management system can help eliminate the time and cost involved with fax and email. Most organizations have an existing paper record inventory, and these documents also have to be integrated into the system. Using document scanning services, organizations can have their documents streamlined and converted into digital formats to be stored in their document management system. Right from the initial scanning that includes conversion with OCR or optical character recognition software that allows search facility within the documents, to indexing and post-production work, the document scanning company can be of assistance. In this way, the organization need not interrupt their routine work and invest resources for a few employees to undertake the entire document transfer themselves.
Quality control and compliance that constitute important components of the food manufacturing processes also involves management of various documents from multiple locations for audit purposes. Authorized personnel must be able to access the data without any hassles. Since the documentation volume is considerable, the data must be easily searchable as well. All this calls for efficient document management.
Digitization and streamlining of your invoices and accounts payable documents will help increase productivity and save time. Speeding up the workflow related to paying your suppliers and getting paid will enable you to pay your suppliers sooner as well as cash in on discounts on invoices. Organizing and storing your documents for later reference is vital when it comes to managing supplier as well as customer relationships.
- When customers find that it is easy to order products from you, more and more customers will be encouraged to buy from you.
- When suppliers find that it is easy to do business with you, supplier relationships can be strengthened.
Working with a document scanning company that also provides data cleansing services will offer you access to an easy way to store and retrieve all of your files from multiple locations quickly and efficiently. This will improve efficiency at every step from ordering to invoicing. You can improve quality control and compliance as well a security throughout your processes.
