Ensure Food and Beverage Quality with D365 Supply Chain Management

Posted on: March 9, 2022 | By: Guy Logan | Microsoft Dynamics AX/365, Microsoft Dynamics Manufacturing

The food industry and beverage industry manage highly sensitive products which is why it is very important for them to ensure that high-quality standards are being met. Customers tend to reach for the same brand items when shopping for groceries. However, even a small incident where the quality of products of a brand has been compromised could lead to the entire brand image being ruined and a halt to the customer’s allegiance to the company’s products. Do you remember when the popular ice cream company Blue Bell had positive test results for Listeria which ultimately led them to recall all ice cream products in 2015? For many years following the incident, Blue Bell struggled to recapture the customers it lost during the outbreak.

Therefore, having appropriate quality control measures in place is essential when brands are handling food and beverage items. This blog introduces the quality and nonconformance management features in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and explains how they can help improve product quality in your supply chain.

Quality management benefits to your company

Quality assurance involves product testing and the management of nonconforming material. Quality management can help your company in these ways:

  • Help guarantee a high level of product quality in your supply chain.
    • These processes also help optimize supply chain processes and increase customer satisfaction.
  • Manage turnaround times when you’re dealing with nonconforming products, regardless of the point of origin of those products.
    • You can link diagnostic results to correction tasks. The system can schedule tasks to correct problems and therefore help prevent recurrences of those problems in the future.
  •  Lets you track issues by problem type and lets you identify solutions as either short-term or long-term.
    • Statistics about key performance indicators (KPIs) provide insight into nonconformance problems that have previously occurred and the solutions that were applied to correct them. You can use historical data to help review the effectiveness of quality measures that have previously been taken and to determine appropriate measures in the future.
  •  Help you manage turnaround times when you handle nonconforming products, regardless of their point of origin.
    • Because diagnostic types are linked to correction reporting, Supply Chain Management can schedule tasks to correct problems and prevent them from recurring.
  • Includes functionality for tracking issues by problem type (even when the issues are internal problems), and for identifying solutions as short-term or long-term.
    • Statistics about KPIs provide insight into the history of previous nonconformance issues and the solutions that were used to correct them. You can use historical data to review the effectiveness of previous quality measures and determine appropriate measures to use in the future.

When you set up a quality association, Supply Chain Management can generate quality orders for various business processes, events, and conditions. The quality association can cover a specific item, a specific group of items, or all items.

Examples of the use of quality management

Quality management is flexible and can be implemented in various ways to meet the requirements of specific levels of supply chain operations. The following examples illustrate possible uses of these features:

  • Automatically start a quality control process, based on predefined criteria (for example, when warehouse registration of a purchase order from a specific vendor occurs).
  • Block inventory during inspection to prevent non-approved inventory from being used (full blocking of purchase order quantities).
  • Use item sampling as part of a quality association to define the amount of current physical inventory that must be inspected. Sampling can be based on fixed quantities, a percentage, or a full license plate.
  • Create quality orders for partial receipts. To create a quality order that is based on the quantity that is physically received with an order, you must select the Per updated quantity check box on the Item sampling page.
  • Create test types that include minimum, maximum, and target test values, and perform qualitative-versus-quantitative testing that has predefined validation results.
  • Specify an acceptable quality level (AQL) to control quality measure tolerances.
  • Specify the resources that an inspection operation requires, such as a test area and test instruments.

Controlling the quality management process

Here are some of the ways that you can control the quality management process:

  • Create quality orders that are based on trigger points, such as “at product receipt” for inbound operations or “at product pick-up” for outbound operations.
  • Document test results, and determine whether the results meet the established test criteria and AQLs.
  • Use document management for detailed product specifications and user-specific notes as part of reporting during the inspection process.
  • Maintain nonconforming products, and correlate those products with additional nonconformance information to track down the original cause of a problem.
  • Document the cost of managing a nonconformance. This cost can include the items (such as spare parts), miscellaneous charges, and the timesheet hours that are required to correct the nonconformance.
  • Schedule error correction processes by using correction handling that is linked to quality orders.

Quality management process.

Product testing and quality orders

Product testing is typically referred to as quality control and uses quality orders. By using the quality control functionality, you can do the following:

  • Define the tests that must be performed for material. These tests include the quality specifications, the applicable test instrument, documents that describe the test, a sampling plan, and the AQLs.
  • Create a quality order that identifies the tests that must be performed for a specific order, such as a purchase or production order, or for a specific inventory quantity. You can manually create a quality order, or a quality order can be automatically generated based on quality guidelines.
  • Define the quality guidelines that are related to purchase, quarantine, production, or sales orders in each business process, so that a quality order that identifies the testing requirements for incoming or outgoing material can be automatically generated.
  • Record the test results in a quality order, validate the test results against the AQL, and print a certificate of analysis that shows the test results.

Next Steps

If you are interested in learning more about how Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Supply Chain Management can help ensure food and beverage quality, contact us here to find out how we can help you grow your business. You can also email us at info@loganconsulting.com or call (312) 345-8817.