Quality Assurance Services

The First Report of Injury or Illness is the reporting of workplace incidents that result in harm to an employee. It is often called incident reporting, though that is a broad term that can also include a range of incidents like vehicle accidents and chemical spills. It also provides information on the claimant, employer, insurance carrier and medical practitioner necessary to begin the claims process. Details of the claimant’s employment and circumstances surrounding the injury or illness are also requested.

Laboratory testing refers to the process of performing any tests or procedures that are conducted in a controlled environment where the appropriate equipment, supplies and certified expertise are available. Laboratory testing can be simply referred to as a laboratory test or lab test.

A non-conformance or nonconformity means that something went wrong. The non-conformance could be in a service, a product, a process, goods from a supplier or in the management system itself. It occurs when something does not meet the specifications or requirements in some way. It is a design and a structure related document that addresses issues where there has been a deviation from the project specification or where work fails to meet agreed quality standards.

Product inspection is the process of checking goods for compliance with your specifications and requirements. Generally conducted at the factory manufacturing your product, the product inspection process primarily focuses on checking the appearance, construction and basic function of a product.

Shelf life is the length of time that a commodity may be stored without becoming unfit for use, consumption or sale. It is the period of time, from the date of manufacture, that a product is expected to remain within its approved product specification while stored under defined conditions or whether a commodity should no longer be on a pantry shelf (unfit for use), or just no longer on a supermarket shelf (unfit for sale, but not yet unfit for use). It applies to a wide range of items (like cosmetics, foods and beverages, medical devices, medicines, explosives, pharmaceutical drugs, chemicals, tyres, batteries, and many other perishable items).

In some regions, an advisory best before, mandatory use by or freshness date is required on packaged perishable foods. The concept of expiration date is related but legally distinct in some jurisdictions in order to avoid the need to replace entire stockpiles every few years at significant expense and because it was recognized through testing that certain products remained stable beyond their labelled expiration dates when properly stored, the Shelf-Life Extension Program (SLEP) was established and is a service program through which the labelled shelf life of certain stockpiled materials can be extended after select products undergo periodic stability testing conducted. Through expiration dating extensions, this program helps to defer the replacement costs of certain products in critical stockpiles. Shelf life is typically expressed in units of months, i.e. 24 months, 36 months, to a maximum of 60 months.

A product specification sheet is a detailed, concise document that clearly labels all of your products specifications and is also referred to as “product specs”. A document with a set of requirements that provides production teams the information they need to build out new features or functionality of a product or service. The purpose of a specification is to provide a description and statement of the requirements of a product, components of a product, the capability or performance of a product and/or the service or work to be performed to create a product. A finished product specification is the information sheet that documents all of the attributes and information regarding the finished product that you produce in your food business.

Statistical sampling programs are used for the statistical analysis of the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation and presentation of data. Business statistics help them discover patterns and trends of customers and other useful information that help them make decisions. It is a subset containing the characteristics of a larger population. Samples are used in statistical testing when population sizes are too large for the test to include all possible members or observations. A sample should represent the population as a whole and not reflect any bias toward a specific attribute.

Supplier Audit Program involves independent auditors visit your supplier’s manufacturing facilities to identify any gaps and to analyse their manufacturing process and capacities, quality management system and process, structural safety, social compliance or environmental impact, engineering change process and shipping process, allowing a manufacturer to close the loop on any deviations, non-conformances or delays. It is a valuable tool for regularly auditing the compliance or performance of your suppliers, while leaving you free to manage your operation. The program consists of 2^ndparty audits, customized audit solutions or 3^rdparty certification based on your needs involving the chosen criteria and code of practice in addition to the international standards.