What technology do you use for the remote audit plant tour?
If you’ve had a remote audit what technology do you use, such as the camera for doing the plant tour and any other tech to assist. Also, any do’s and don’ts or problems you faced? Thanks, Simon
Patchy wifi coverage in the plant has been an issue. Great signal in the office, not so much in the far corners of the production floor and warehouse area.
I've taken a couple of auditors around on WhatsApp video calls to get around this, but it eats 4G data fairly rapidly!
Also apparently a bit disorienting for the auditor when the phone is being flipped around to be inspected and sanitised before being signed off to go into the factory...
Field/depth of vision is a bit of an issue without a more formidable camera - auditors are used to being able to wander around the site and e.g. read the labels on things in the top layer of racking, but that doesn't really work with a camera phone.
Hello MS Teams app on the mobile phone works ok,
However, I 100% agree with the above comment.... not at all the same audit quality, and feeling that you have really try to do your best to see, talk, and read all you wanted along the site tour...
best regards,
Leila
Patchy wifi +1. Also, had to use headphones due to noise so was weird that the auditor can only speak to/be heard by one person at a time. Means lots of pressure on one person and no "break" when someone else would normally jump in to answer something in a regular audit.
I had a remote Organic audit conducted via Zoom. My facility's internet is "ok" at best, so I used my phone's data the whole time and didn't have any issues. Interestingly, the greatest issue was that the auditor was using the free version of Zoom, so we got kicked off every 40 minutes and had to reconnect. My facility uses a hybrid of paper and electronic records, so it was inconvenient to have to scan all of our paper records for review.
We've used Whatsapp, MS Teams and Skype. All depended on what was suitable for the site being audited. As others have said - connection signal, gets worse once you're in the plant. Noise in the plants limiting the audit discussion, and limited to what you can actually see and somewhat limited to what the operator shows. I've found that the virtual walk through certainly is not as comprehensive as what can be covered with a physical site audit.
I agree with all of the above, and would suggest having a second person with a second phone that can take still images of ingredient labels, documents, etc to send through to the auditor as it can be hard/time consuming to do these sorts of checks over Skype/Teams.
There is also the safety consideration of walking around through high traffic and production areas with a phone held up for Skype, don't want to trip and drop the auditor!
We have conducted two virtual audits and for the most part the only concern is the video in the plant. Very sketchy and lose connection in many areas. What we did with the last audit was the auditor sent a list of areas that he wished to view so we could supply stills for his review as well. Auditor had a very nice set up through their company so we could send documentation safely and securely. We have only been using Microsoft Teams as per corporate direction.
We have tons of CCTV cameras, many of which are PTZ, which allows good views of most of what customers want to see.
We also have a couple of police "body cams" which can show detail if directed, but are totally dependent on wifi capabilities.
We have also used Face Time for those Apple platforms. Whatsapp would be a good possibility, but I find most people in the US have no clue what it is. Again though, you are dependent on wifi strength or if you have 5G like me, it's not an issue LOL
Marshall
I have experienced just using video chat such as Viber or Zoom. The only problem encountered is when one location had particularly choppy connection - both from wifi and mobile data.