Olymel: from paper to digital food safety

Project Context

Paper-based management was a daily reality for Olymel: supplier lists, inputs, and controls.

With so many documents in circulation, maintaining up-to-date and accessible lists was a real challenge.

To streamline repetitive tasks, standardize practices, and improve efficiency, Olymel chose to go digital and partner with a company capable of supporting this transition.

Challenge

Paper-based management created several obstacles within the teams:

• Time wasted
  Controls had to be printed, distributed, corrected, and archived, while supplier and input lists were implemented, distributed, recorded, and then reassessed.

• Errors or omissions
  Each user had to complete the documentation and return it to the office. This manual process, however, carried a risk of lost documents or incomplete or incorrectly filled-out forms.

• Archiving after audits
  Quality assurance wasted several hours gathering archive boxes before audits and almost a day refiling everything afterward.

The solutions freed us from a significant portion of the administrative work by simplifying task management and execution. And thanks to Datahex's support, including training, consulting, and their expertise, we were able to program and automate several functionalities related to control sheets.

- Michael Ouellet, Manager, Food Safety Program Compliance

A team-led transition

The shift to digital often creates resistance within teams. At Olymel, adoption was immediate.

From the very first training sessions, teams saw the tangible benefits of the solutions and found the platforms easy to use. The change therefore happened naturally, without resistance.

Managers played a key role: they simplified the tools, adapted them to the needs on the ground, and involved employees in the transition. The result: strong commitment, greater rigor, and a strengthened culture of innovation.

The transition was straightforward, partly thanks to user-friendly tools, but primarily because the teams embraced the change. They felt involved, motivated, and proud to contribute to this technological evolution. This engagement translated into greater rigor, more consistency, and ultimately, more reliable and easier-to-manage documentation on a daily basis.

Concrete benefits

Paperless Forms

Olymel no longer needs to spend hours filing, searching for, or gathering paper documents. Information is digital, always accessible, and used to support decision-making.

• Employee engagement
  Teams feel motivated and engaged. This values ​​their work and makes them proactive, focused on continuous improvement.

• Time savings
  Teams spend less time handling paper and have more time to analyze discrepancies and prevent their recurrence.

• Simplified audits and inspections
  Audits are much simpler thanks to quick access to digital forms and their ease of translation.

• Prevention of errors/omissions
  Validation rules prevent errors by immediately flagging any non-compliant or incomplete information.

• Rapid information sharing
  Sharing and preparing documentation for CFIA inspections or certification audits is much faster, and some documents are even continuously accessible to avoid having to gather everything weekly or monthly.

The use of Paperless Forms has gradually expanded to all departments and teams across the 24 facilities, as well as corporate departments. The deployed forms cover records, monitoring, training, and audits.

Supplyline

• Rapid access to information
  Supplier lists and product specifications are more readily accessible to employees, with real-time updates.

• Easy tracking of required documents
  Teams can quickly identify missing documents and take action before delays occur.

Supplyline deployment at Olymel has been a success because it adopts a structured, realistic, and tailored approach to effectively manage documentation. It is consistent with our existing tools and our suppliers' compliance requirements.

Today, Supplyline is used to standardize the supplier approval process at the corporate level, with local accessibility per site to avoid duplicate data entry. It also enables direct communication with our suppliers and serves as a data source for developing indicators on compliance rates, supplier categorization, and risk levels.

Data that supports decision-making

Paperless Forms data is also securely accessible via Power BI software. At Olymel, several teams have invested the time saved by eliminating paper to develop analytics for the data collected with Paperless Forms. These trend analyses are a major advantage because they quickly and clearly highlight recurring discrepancies, allowing for the implementation of preventative measures to avoid their recurrence. The most technologically advanced teams now track their entire process and its traceability in Power BI using data from Paperless Forms.

Centralizing all this data generates significant time savings, particularly for traceability exercises, training tracking, audits, complaint investigations, monitoring continuous improvement objectives, and the automated drafting of management reviews based on key data.

Why choose Datahex

For Olymel, choosing Datahex was a natural fit. The company was looking for a solution capable of standardizing its practices, reducing wasted time, and modernizing its document management at scale. Datahex solutions have eliminated compilation tasks, improved information traceability, and facilitated decision-making. This collaboration has also strengthened team commitment and encouraged a culture of innovation within the organization.

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