The Northern California Institute of Food Technologists was hosted recently by Tulocay & Company, a BatchMaster customer in Napa Valley.
Hosted by Chef Michael Garza, the institute members were most impressed with the visit, as they wrote in “The Hornblower”, their magazine.
A feature was meeting the BatchMaster Team.
Read the HORNBLOWER article here.
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…
Based in Cambridge, ON Canada, Creative Manufacturing Solutions, Inc. is the latest of our profiled Resellers who have signed up to represent BatchMaster Manufacturing for Microsoft Dynamics GP, the single-solution for process manufacturing ERP completely “In-Built” within Dynamics GP.
Creative Manufacturing Solutions,. Inc. is a Microsoft Certified Partner covering Ontario, Canada – with mid-term plans (Q4 2011/Q1 2012) to service Western Canada including Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. Read more…
Continuing our series of announcements to introduce the Resellers who have signed up to represent BatchMaster Manufacturing for Microsoft Dynamics GP, the single-solution for process manufacturing ERP completely “In-Built” within Dynamics GP, we welcome aboard Empower Business Solutions.
Empower is an established provider of enterprise resource planning (ERP), business intelligence (BI) and data warehousing solutions for small to medium-sized businesses in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia. They are based in Altoona, PA. Read more…
After a successful launch at Convergence 2010, a significant number of Microsoft Dynamics GP resellers have already signed up to partner with BatchMaster Software to promote the new BatchMaster Manufacturing for Microsoft Dynamics GP. Because this product is completely “In-Built” within Dynamics GP, and utilizes the Dynamics Sales, Purchasing and Inventory modules along with the financials, the opportunity to offer a single process manufacturing ERP solution to this sector within Dynamics GP is unique.
We will tell you, over the next few months, about the Resellers who have signed up. If you are small, and need a reseller in your area to partner with in the process manufacturing sector, these are the people who can help you.
With this in mind, we say “Welcome!” to Premier Computing Technologies. Read more…
Demilec USA is a leading manufacturer of environmentally safe spray foam insulation. Based in Arlington, TX, Demilec selected BatchMaster Manufacturing for SAP Business One because of the inherent functionality for chemical manufacturers including quality and compliance reporting. The strength of BatchMaster’s scheduling tools will allow Demilec to have better visibility on production and lead time planning to meet customer demands. When fully implemented the system will have 50 BatchMaster Manufacturing named users, together with BatchMaster Manufacturing Planning & Scheduling and MSDS.
Demilec chose SAP Business One for consistency with their corporate SAP eco-system, and chose the SAP Business One / BatchMaster Manufacturing environment over SAP All-In-One as a more cost-effective business platform on the SAP Platform.
The Nutraceutical industry is characterized by extensive individual research leading to widely divergent means and methods of producing “Supplements” for human consumption, and their products are sold via diverse distribution channels. Despite the diversity, nutraceutical manufacturers all share a common central requirement: to deliver safe, profitable products.
The roadmap to safe, quality products is the FDA’s cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practice) guidelines. Dr. Clark Store has incorporated Good Manufacturing Practices in all aspects of their laboratory analysis, manufacturing, packaging and labeling processes, but the expanding range of products meant their paper-based system was no longer able to support their compliance requirements. After a detailed search, Self Health Resource Center has turned to BatchMaster ERP to automate and modernize their manufacturing unit and to keep better tracking of their business processes as required by FDA’s cGMP guidelines.
Dr. Clark Store.com, Self Health Resource Center’ story is similar to many others in the Nutraceutical Industry. Situated in Chula Vista, CA, they manufacture more than 300 of their own branded products which include herbal cleanses, sanitation and personal care products, based on the research of Dr. Hulda Clark, Ph.D, Biology, who believed that a great majority of food supplements are too processed, contain too many ingredients mixed together, and contain all kinds of toxic manufacturing chemicals. Self Health specialize in producing supplements that do not contain excipients such as colors, tablet blinders, release agents, binders or flow agents. According to Manneola Moreiera, Accounting Manger at Self Health ”The main focus of the company is to produce highly pure and potent products using the whole herb, not the herbal extracts, even if it means taking significantly longer to produce”.