Consignment under inspection is photographed and picture is incorporated into quality control document
Exsa is excited about the introduction of an innovative new tool that will significantly cut down on the time spent documenting quality control during harvesting and packing of their grapes. In fact the newly introduced DiPAR Mobile QC software written for tablets has truly eliminated the need of putting pen to paper!
The implementation forms part of a bigger project by DiPAR Systems, partially funded by the Western Cape Department of Economic Development and Tourism and includes nine different organisations, 16 different mobile application implementations and a total of 90 new mobile application users.
Exsa grower and director Leon Viljoen undertook the first official quality inspection using this technology on his farm De Vlei near De Doorns on 17 January. “This new system is really easy to use” says Leon Viljoen. “Grapes are highly perishable and keeping the office up to date on grape quality will be hugely beneficial to our operations and the marketing process.”
The Mobile Quality Control (or Mobile QC) system was developed in 2011 following 18 months of mobile technology research done by DiPAR Systems. The system was based on the needs expressed by one of the companies in their user group and has since been further developed and marketed to several companies. The mobile quality application is currently being rolled out at eight different sites which include exporters, producers, pack houses, and independent inspection agencies.
“DiPAR Systems approached us at the end of 2011 with an offer to be part of the mobile funding project” says Gabriël Viljoen, Exsa Financial Manager. “We immediately saw the potential value of the system and committed to a full-scale rollout of the software.”
This included setting up an array of different components, starting with a mobile quality capturing system that allows quality inspectors to capture inspections directly on a smart phone or tablet making use of easy to understand drop down selections. The inspector can also add pictures and scan barcodes with the mobile device and synchronise all of the data to a centralised database. Furthermore, the system includes a fully automated reporting component that sends out a quality report per inspection, as well as daily and weekly summary reports. This includes pictures linked to the inspection, barcodes scanned and brix and weight measurements taken. Finally, mobile quality data is directly integrated with the intake data provided by DiPAR’s Farm Systems, providing us with real-time quality information that fully integrates with the rest of our stock information. This is also valuable for buyers of the fruit as detailed and visual information of each inspected consignment can be forwarded to them on request.
This application dramatically reduces time spent compiling and managing quality reports and pictures and provides all the stakeholders with quick access to quality information. Marketers and Technical managers have real-time, easy to use quality information to base marketing and technical decisions on. By implementing the system, we can now provide all of our stakeholders with accurate, detailed and consistent quality data at the fraction of the time and cost it would take to do so manually.
“An exciting part of the implementation is that we are going to have most of our inspections done by our producers”, says Gabriël Viljoen. This makes our implementation the largest of its kind at present. In addition, the software provided by DiPAR Systems is arguably the first cross-platform(1), client-hosted (2), integrated (3) mobile quality inspection system developed in the world and places us at the leading edge of quality control and management.
Johan Mostert Jr. at DiPAR says, “We believe that the Mobile QC platform, which includes the mobile quality application as well as the automated and QlikView (TM) usiness Intelligence Reporting, is changing the nature of how quality information is captured, shared and used in the fruit industry. It puts the organisations using the system at a unique advantage as it saves them time and costs and it consolidates one of the most critical data components in the fruit information chain. It also simplifies data capturing and vastly enhances the timeously, yet detailed, distribution of quality information.
DiPAR Systems is proud to be at the forefront of such exciting, new and innovative technology and look forward to seeing EXSA reap the rewards of their forward thinking, in implementing the DiPAR Mobile QC software platform.”