Gold Kist : Success Story

Gold Kist, Inc.

Qualtrax at the heart of food safety.

Situation

Based in Atlanta, GA, Gold Kist Inc. is one of the nation’s largest chicken companies, operating nine divisions with eleven processing plants across the Southeast In 2003, Gold Kist established its Endeavor for Excellence program, a continuous process improvement program that requires the sharing of best practices, product specifications and other data across the entire organization. Prior to Qualtrax, the process of sharing data and information across the company consumed a considerable amount of time, as important documentation was maintained in binders and managed manually. Gold Kist needed to make this process more manageable and to ensure food safety and quality system documentation was up-to-date in preparation for internal and external audits.

Solution

After looking at several different software packages, Gold Kist selected Qualtrax® for its compliance management and workflow functionality. Today, sharing of information across the company is much easier thanks to Qualtrax. According to Joe Holt, Quality Assurance Group Manager at Gold Kist, "Qualtrax allows us to maintain our food safety and quality system documents online. We are able to reduce or eliminate binders of documents that can become stale as our procedures are updated."

"Qualtrax has helped our employees to be more collaborative. We are building bridges to islands of information." -Joe Holt, Quality Assurance Group Manager Further Processing Gold Kist, Inc.

Creating a Culture of Quality

Qualtrax has quickly become a company best practice, helping to facilitate quality control, compliance and knowledge sharing throughout the organization. When Gold Kist originally purchased Qualtrax, it was for the technical services departments in the company, mainly for Quality Assurance, Food Safety and Compliance and Laboratory Services. Today other functional groups, such as Corporate Engineering and Product Development, have also discovered the value of using Qualtrax to store, manage and search for information. This evolution happened naturally as the other departments saw first-hand how easy the product is to use and how quickly it is adopted by employees. According to Holt, “Qualtrax is becoming the 'go-to' source of information for process and product knowledge. 'Look it up in Qualtrax' is a comment we hear from division and plant managers more frequently. Our people are becoming more collaborative and we're building bridges to 'islands' of knowledge about our business.”

Integration with Existing Applications

Not only did Qualtrax improve document control at Gold Kist, but it provided management the ability to “manage by exception.” Qualtrax’s Gateway Module enables customers to integrate data from existing systems into Qualtrax. In this case, Gold Kist utilizes statistical process control (SPC) software to measure processes. If a process violates the acceptable parameters set by Gold Kist, an automatic non-conformance workflow is started within Qualtrax and routed to the appropriate personnel. This is a real-time method of bringing important events to the attention of management and ensures corrective and preventative action is taken and tracked.

Feature-Rich Solution

In addition to the Gateway Module, Gold Kist has also implemented the Document Compare and PDF Rendering Modules. The Document Compare Module has been especially helpful with regard to procedures, such as the company’s HACCP plan, allowing Gold Kist to quickly assess what document changes have been made over time. The PDF Rendering Module was another key reason Gold Kist chose QualTrax. Gold Kist needed the ability to create tamper-proof documents and this was an ideal solution. Not only are their documents secure, but PDF Rendering eliminates the need for the company to purchase Adobe Acrobat for all users that create and edit documents.

Ease of Implementation

With so many powerful features, one might think Qualtrax would be a bear to implement, but quite the contrary. “The user interface is easy to learn and set-up of the system is very flexible. There is little burden on busy IT resources to configure and maintain the system,” notes Mr. Holt. Adding, “Users quickly become self-sufficient in using the features.” One way Gold Kist has ensured smooth implementation is by utilizing training services from Qualtrax. This allows Gold Kist to quickly prepare a new department or facility to use the software. Qualtrax trainers will hold training sessions with core groups of users, usually 12-15 per division. Then, thanks to the straightforward interface, these core users are able to train their peers. Holt also notes that, “Qualtrax comes with well documented training manuals and the online help system is very useful.”

Continued Expansion

There are currently 400 Qualtrax users at Gold Kist, and as the product continues to grow from department-to-department, that number is expected to increase as more departments begin to use the system. . Looking to the future, Gold Kist continues to add workflows to automate processes. Some of the workflows currently in development are to assist with customer care and specification revision tasks. “With Qualtrax’s help, we are becoming a learning organization,” says Mr. Holt. “We are now able to easily capture best practices and share them across our entire company.”

About Qualtrax, Inc.

Qualtrax, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of CCS-Inc., specializes in document, content, and process management software. Qualtrax focuses on heavily regulated industries where compliance with standards such as 21 CFR Part 11, HACCP, ISO, Sarbanes-Oxley, QS, and TS present challenges to organizations. Qualtrax greatly simplifies document and content management, workflow tracking and business and manufacturing process control. For more information on Qualtrax, visit www.qualtrax.com or call (800) 277-3077.

Download PDF Version of this success story