Recognizing the need for an all-in-one quality-assurance platform, ABC Research Laboratories evaluated the market and selected a partnership with MICROS Supply Chain to provide the end-to-end technology that would allow quality-assurance teams to instantly track compliance at every point along a supply chain.

The result is Actionable Quality Assurance (AQA), a completely cloud-based quality-assurance automation system.

AQA will give its users real-time compliance data at their fingertips in the form of trend reports and dashboards for scorecarding and executive reporting.

Processes and reports that now take a company hours or days to assemble can be generated in seconds. The industry best practices that are the basis of the program will enable rapid recall, withdrawal, and product issue investigation to enable brand protection.

Lori Stephens, business development director for ABC Research and quality-assurance veteran of the restaurant industry, spearheaded AQA’s development. She says the system will dramatically increase supply-chain efficiency and lower compliance and food safety risk.

“AQA clients will be able manage food safety and quality by exception, taking advantage of the 80/20 Rule,” she says. “They will only have to directly manage those significant food safety or quality situations that demand their expertise; the service provided by ABC Research will handle the remaining 80 percent that is purely administrative work.”

AQA will be underpinned and powered by the compliance and traceability solution ‘myCreations’ from MICROS Supply Chain, a subsidiary of MICROS System Inc.

Paul Woodward, founder and managing director for MICROS Supply Chain, says, “AQA offers the food and restaurant industries an efficient, reliable, and accessible platform for a unique blend of quality expertise and specialized software to provide, protect, and promote a brand promise.”

AQA will officially launch this month, and is already being used by several major players in the food industry.

Additional features coming to AQA include a nutritional compliance app, providing a culinary sandbox for companies to hone ingredients in recipes (December 2013) and the ability to manage manufacture facility audits for restaurant compliance (TBA).