Like many other groups in the food and beverage industry, VIVATIS Holding AG has to fulfil numerous industry- and product-specific requirements. After evaluating numerous digital tools, the ideal partner for optimising the processing of quality-relevant data was found in Testify.
As one of the largest groups in the food and luxury food industry in Austria, VIVATIS Holding AG has a broad portfolio with more than 20 well-known brands. These include Maresi, Wojnar's, Weinbergmaier, Gourmet and Senna. Headquartered in Linz, the company employs almost 3,500 people at locations in Austria and Europe and generated sales of over one billion euros in 2022.
Reorganisation of the audit structure with Testify
More than 35 standards and norms have been implemented in the VIVATIS Group. Numerous internal audits are carried out to check that these are being implemented in accordance with the rules. In the last six months alone, the Group’s quality management carried out around 35 audits, not including supplier audits.
As part of the Testify implementation, the first step was to develop a scalable structure for conducting internal audits. By combining the requirements of the various standards in an integrated catalogue of requirements, the audit programme could be further optimised. Redundant surveys of the respective departments can thus be avoided in future. In addition, the respective requirements were allocated directly to the relevant locations. Currently, only the implementation dates and auditors still need to be defined in the audit planning.
Once an audit has been completed, the report is generated automatically and contains the findings, scoring and deviations as well as photo documentation. Issue protocols are sent directly to the colleagues concerned based on a workflow that has been created.
The digitalisation of quality-relevant data is progressing
Implementation of the digital audit structure began at the end of 2022, with the first audits being carried out digitally and the structure optimised in the first quarter of 2023. The aim is now to gradually roll out the system across the Group and make it accessible for internal audits.
Parallel to the development of the audit structure at the holding company, Weinbergmaier, a subsidiary of VIVATIS Holding AG, used Testify to implement a system for the digital recording of all quality-relevant process data. This ranges from the delivery of raw materials to the delivery of finished products. Together with the audit and inspection data, this provides an extensive system for direct quality recording and evaluation of processes and products.
Many advantages
The newly introduced system saves time in audit preparation, report creation and action tracking and also massively increases the quality of the reports. Another advantage is that the audit data analysed via Power BI can also be linked to other process and quality-relevant data. Group-wide quality management also benefits from the possibility of analysing weak points across all Group locations, which is essential for the long-term planning of strategic quality assurance measures in the companies.