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What are the challenges for food supplement brands when implementing a quality control system? When does Excel no longer suffice?

The acquisition and choice of a LIMS regularly haunts discussions and is periodically debated when working in a laboratory, but does the question also
arise when one has to manage the quality control of products without an internal laboratory? This paradox actually hides two issues :

Operational management of quality control.
Access to a digitalized laboratory to manage analytical subcontracting.

We were recently in contact with a company that works in the field of health ingredients.

This structure of about ten people, certified FSSC 22000, offers about a hundred references, mainly in trade. It has a small in-house manufacturing
activity and entrusts some of its products to processors under its own brand. In the absence of an in-house control laboratory, analyses are entrusted to
subcontracted laboratories.

The Quality manager is responsible for quality control and relations with these labs.

CIKLab is an online solution allowing you to organise your control plans and easily track your quality control analyses. This solution is particularly well suited to companies that subcontract their analyses to external laboratories, but also works very well for those who have an internal laboratory and simply want to improve analysis organisation and tracking.

CIKLab is the only SaaS solution that allows you tolink together your products, control plans, analyses and internal and external laboratories.

For several years, more and more individuals and companies have preferred to pay for the use of a service or good rather than owning it. This concerns all sectors of activity: video or music streaming platforms, scooter or car rental services, or even the use of service companies to manage the cleaning of premises or the security of buildings. IT is no exception to the rule. This is known as SaaS (Software as a Service) management. The interest is to no longer have to invest in an expensive IT solution but to simply subscribe to a software and pay only for its effective use.

SaaS advantages are numerous and apply to quality control software, whether in terms of cost, evolution, accessibility or security.

Our online laboratory management software is called CIKLab: but do you know where its name comes from?

The implementation of quality control processes is essential from the start of a production or distribution activity of food products. However, at first, some Excel files as quality control software can be used to plan and follow the analyses.

In this article, we offer you some strategies that we discovered while talking with quality control managers in the food industry.