Overview
Armitage Pet Care is one of the UK’s leading pet product brands, supplying some of the country’s biggest retailers. Culverdocs helped them move away from manual, paper-based quality control in their warehouse and manufacturing operations, improving record-keeping and delivering huge time savings.
With roots tracing back to 1775, Armitage manufactures at its Nottinghamshire factory and works with suppliers around the world. When Head of Manufacturing & Compliance Kev King joined in 2017, he found operations were largely manual and paper-based. After achieving ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 accreditations in 2018, digitalising quality control became a priority.
The Challenge
Quality control meant wheeling a trolley of paper manuals around the warehouse, filling out paper forms, then typing everything back into Excel in the office – a cumbersome, time-consuming process. When things got busy, backlogs built up, forcing Kev to pull staff off the manufacturing lines and causing further delays downstream.
One of my targets for 2021 was to digitalise our quality control operations. A lot of our suppliers are in the Far East, so moving to an app-based process would ensure greater transparency and data sharing both ways.
Kev King
Head of Manufacturing & Compliance · Armitage Pet Care
The business needed a solution to:
- Replace manual, paper-based quality control checks.
- Remove warehouse backlogs that pulled staff off manufacturing lines.
- Improve transparency and data sharing with suppliers overseas.
The Solution
Kev chose Culverdocs for its simplicity, low risk, and price, kicking off in May 2020 with a digital quality control form for visual inspections. He equipped staff with new phones and tablets, replacing the trolley of files with everything accessible on hand-held devices.
From the first inspection form, the solution has grown to cover:
- Quality control inspections on hand-held devices, with reports generated automatically.
- Exception reporting and non-conformance workflows.
- A supplier portal, letting suppliers run their own QC checks before dispatch.
- A supplier dashboard holding inspections, non-conformance certificates, and accreditations.
- Secure, cloud-based reporting and record-keeping.
Kev has continued to develop the solution with Culverdocs, iterating on it dozens of times since launch.
The Impact
Hours Back
Automatic report generation freed the quality controller from hours of typing, saving around 60% of his time on a busy day.
Now, because of the app, he doesn’t need to write that report. He just clicks a button and the report is automatically generated… it would save him at least four or five hours – so sixty percent of his time.
No More Backlogs
Since launch, staff have never had to be moved off manufacturing lines to clear a warehouse backlog, saving around six to twelve days a month.
One day of my quality manager’s time is worth six months of the app. I’ve got several times ROI right there.
Robust, Instant Reporting
Reports are now instant, standardised, and cloud-based, and can be shared straight from the app with the executive and purchasing teams.
The reports are instant; we’re not dealing with an Excel sheet. It’s all standardised. And it’s cloud-based.
Staff Buy-in
Team members who were nervous about moving off paper have fully embraced the app.
My quality manager worried what we were going to do with all the files and folders… Now, she absolutely loves it.
The Results
Culverdocs has delivered several times its cost in ROI, along with robust reporting and environmental savings from reduced colour printing across more than 1,000 products. A supplier audit solution could save thousands on independent inspectors, and following Armitage’s acquisition by Spectrum Brands, Kev hopes the solution will be adopted more widely across the group.
Culverdocs are great at drawing out my ideas and converting them into a solution that works. So far, we’ve been pretty successful.
Kev King
Head of Manufacturing & Compliance · Armitage Pet Care
Time Saved (QC)
Days Saved Per Month
Capterra Rating
Years with Culverdocs
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