BatchMaster is a truly global company, and I have been privileged to visit many diverse countries and cultures while visiting our resellers and customers.  Throughout the middle-east, I discovered that there is nowhere else in the world where meat is prepared and cooked quite as well – tender, succulent, great-tasting.  It is prepared with strict adherence to Halal, the animals are slaughtered in a ritual way known as Zibah.

Back home, I mourn, as do many others, the demise of the local butchery.  With the proliferation of supermarkets with their huge meat sections, the independent butcher has all but disappeared, along with their personal service and unique sense of humour.

Imagine, then, my delight at discovering a Halal butcher had opened not far from my home to service our growing population of immigrants from Islamic countries.  The quantum leap in quality more than justifies the modest premium on supermarket prices.  The owner and his staff are friendly and more than ready to give great advice on the best cuts and how to cook them.  Run out of stir-fry beef?  No problem, give me five minutes and I will prepare some for you.  Now listed in the ‘Top-10’ ethnic food stores in my city, my wife and I hope “our” butcher shop doesn’t become too popular.

There is, however, a serious side to the production of Halal-certified products.  I well remember visiting a food manufacturer in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta when the police descended on the adjoining business and arrested the owner and production manager.  The problem?  A minute quantity of pork gelatine had been discovered in one of their products, and this was clearly against the law for Halal-certified products.

Every single ingredient in Halal products must adhere to the standards.  Many of BatchMaster’s customers manufacture Halal-certified products, and BatchMaster provides them with the functionality to ensure their full compliance.

It starts with an expanded ‘Physical Property’ function which allows ingredients to be classified as ‘Halal’, ‘Kosher’, ‘Organic’, ‘NFI’ and more.  It extends to specific ‘Lot Features’ recorded on receipt of ingredients.

BatchMaster’s multi-level Ingredient Statement report accurately reflects the status of all ingredients, ensuring there is no contamination from non-Halal items.

When it comes to production, BatchMaster can provide advanced tools for scheduling like products together to avoid cross-contamination and minimize wash-downs.

If you are manufacturing Certified-Halal products, BatchMaster is the obvious choice to manage your processes and compliance.  Click the links above to learn more.  My own experiences with such products lead me to encourage your success!

From time to time we are asked the question: Does BatchMaster support Chinese language?

The short answer is YES, however there are a number of things you should keep in mind. Read more…

A Lot tracking system is a system that records information associated with a batch of product. It could be as simple as knowing what raw material went into a particular batch of product. Lot tracking allows you to track several units of a stock item using the same lot or batch no. A User can determine what can be purchased or sold by Lot status. Expiry dates and user defined statuses allow you to further control the stock item. You cannot sell stock items that have reached or passed their expiry date. Read more…

In May 2010 the FDA announced it would begin conducting “tag along” inspections to check compliance with FDA 21 CFR Part 11.  Why now, 13 years after its introduction? And what is the purpose in the “Tag-along inspections?  Read more…

The explosion which rocked the coatings factory covered everything in reach with yellow paint.  While little physical damage was caused to actual plant, much product was lost due to cross-contamination, and the clean-up took weeks.  The cause was easily identified – two products with almost identical vendor item codes sat side-by-side in the staging area.  Although the code difference was a single letter, the use for those products was vastly different – one was for use only in water-based products, the other for use only in solvent-based products.  When the water-based material was tipped into a solvent mix, the results were catastrophic, especially for the worker who spent hours in hospital having yellow paint removed from nearly every orifice, and his hair and skin.

Of course, such mistakes in other sectors could have much more serious outcomes – contaminated products causing illness or death. Read more…

The collective experience of our implementation consultants suggests that the Quality Control Department presents the biggest challenge in getting them to use the company’s ERP system.  Small wonder, then, that many manufacturers have difficulty in getting buy-in from the QC Department to implement an ERP system in the first place.

In areas as diverse as road safety, healthy eating, and drug use, Governments and regulatory authorities have long debated the relative merits of education vs enforcement.  Quality Control departments in many quality-conscious and regulated process manufacturing plants stick religiously to their paper-based systems.  Business owners and managers, and even the ERP consultants, frequently despair of getting this critical department to make the change to recording all their data directly into the ERP system.  The culture of QC departments, and their importance to the business, often means they are a “Law unto themselves”, and are, more often than not, largely left alone to make their own decisions.

There can be no argument, however, that having the QC data available immediately to the entire business brings tremendous benefit – more of that below.  So what works best, education or enforcement?  BatchMaster Manufacturing for SAP Business One has the tools to let you take either approach, however we believe that education on the benefits of analyzing the pattern of quality control results for a product or family of products brings the QC people on board very quickly. Read more…