Collagen manufacturer Seagarden got rid of many of the challenges around management processes, competence control and deviations after they started using RamBase QMS.
Seagarden is Scandinavia’s only producer of collagen, which they produce from wild-caught cod from the North Atlantic. The company was started in 2000 and has its head office and production facility at Avaldsnes on Karmøy and almost 30 employees.
Challenges and requirements
As a certified company, Seagarden is committed to continuously improving the food safety management system with tracking changes. Manual document management proved to be too resource intensive as the company grew and the amount of activity increased.
– We experienced a need for a management system that could facilitate documented theoretical training. We also needed a system with access control to be able to control who has access to which parts of the control system at any given time. We were also looking for a user-friendly deviation system that could give us the opportunity for quick registration and easy processing of unwanted incidents or improvement proposals, says Seagarden’s Quality Manager, Lucyna Filipek.
– With RamBase QMS, the work of continuous improvement is much easier. The deviation system has integrated a “why-why” analysis that helps in the work of finding the cause and the underlying cause. In RamBase QMS, the registration of the discrepancy can either be done through an app on a mobile phone or on the PC. You can register deviations and in addition document this by attaching photos in connection with deviations and incidents, says Filipek.
Input from the performers
She finds that the continuous improvement work has become much easier thanks to the ability to leave feedback on documents that are in the system.
– This gives us the opportunity to get good input from employees and means that people who actually perform the work on a daily basis, can help maintain and improve the procedures they use in their work. It helps to strengthen the ownership and commitment to HSE and our quality system, and contributes in addition to continuous improvement. The system can define revision intervals on each individual document, which helps to update / review documents before they become too old, says Filipek.
Full control over necessary expertise
The quality manager experiences that everyday life has become easier.
– All new employees who start with us get a clear and complete training plan to adhere to. RamBase QMS is a system that is easy to use and it is easy to create and revise the documents, and for a regular user the system is clear when it comes to finding out. It is also a great advantage to be able to link requirements and competence to different roles, but also to each and every employee. In this way we ensure that all employees have access to acquire the necessary competence, and we can set up intervals for refreshing knowledge. In this way all employees receive information about changes in work routines and procedures that belong to their roles and area of responsibility as soon as a procedure has been changed or updated. The function with read confirmation is a very useful tool in this connection.
A challenge Seagarden had with its old manual system was to process feedback and improvement suggestions for procedures and to communicate new or changed training requirements to the employees. Information is now automatically provided through RamBase QMS – without the need for manual follow-up.
Easier to learn from deviations
Seagarden also had a great need for a simpler and clearer deviation system.
– This was very important to us, and now, with the help of RamBase QMS, we can link several measures and actions into a single non-conformance treatment. We can also compare similar deviations and incidents, which gives us a better overview of which deviations and incidents recur, and where we need to focus. With RamBase QMS deviation registration has become simpler and includes both an assessment of the risk of prioritizing deviations, as well as why-why analysis and information about consequences and possible consequences related to the deviation. Reminder system via notification by e-mail about reported deviations and deadlines saves us a lot of work, says Filipek.
Resource saving
– The working day has become much easier in terms of checking documentation in our quality system. Management of audit intervals and automatic information to those responsible for certain documents when it is time for auditing, saves resources that previously had to be created by manual management, she emphasizes.
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