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doi:10.1094/CFW-53-3-0130 |
VIEW ARTICLE The Role and Impact of Automation in an Effective Quality Management Program S. B. Keil. AcquiData, Inc., Garden City, NY. Cereal Foods World 53(3):130-133. The hallmarks of a good quality management program are many, but there is only one ultimate goal: to ensure that each time a consumer buys your product they will experience exactly the same flavors, textures, colors, etc. Quality means consistency and reproducibility. An effective quality management program should enable the production plant to consistently produce the same product with the same characteristics, year after year, and/or irrespective of location of production. The most important first step for a quality management program, therefore, is to identify those parameters that affect the end product and that can be controlled and then enable the accurate measurement of those parameters in a repeatable, consistent way. The greater the number of these identified parameters, the tighter the quality control can be. What role can automation play to help quality departments truly be effective? Today, clipboards and data entry sheets simply won’t do if you truly intend to have an effective quality program. Why is that? This article examines the hallmarks of a good quality management program and then goes on to see how automation can directly impact each of these characteristics.
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