Westminster, CO -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/05/2013 -- TraceGains helps automatically detect and manage issues with industry suppliers at the corporate, lot shipment, and ingredient attribute levels to reduce waste in daily operations and defects in manufacturing. TraceGains will typically result in a better than 50% reduction in receipt of out-of-spec lots, and a 20% reduction in ingredient variability.

Lean and Six Sigma are principles that are designed to reduce waste and defects to optimize your efficiency and profitability. Managing upstream issues that cause waste and introduce defects create issues that are not under direct control of COOs.

Onsite inventory moves to more of a JIT model as companies extend inventory visibility to suppliers’ docks with TraceGains’ automated purchase order acknowledgement, which informs company leaders exactly what quantity of which product will be received on what day, and at what cost, freeing up cash flow. Leaders know whether incoming ingredients meet specs for each lot shipment, often before product leaves suppliers’ docks. Early warning gives companies time to react and optimize resources and shipments to customers.

This reduces many of the wastes in operation:
- Transportation – Companies reject shipments before they arrive, often even before they are shipped.
- Inventory – Because of increased inventory visibility to what suppliers will be shipping when, and for how much, and a marked reduction in out-spec inventory, production can be better scheduled, cash is freed up, and reverse logistics events are minimized.
- Motion – As ingredients, raw materials, and packaging supplies inventory is optimized fewer trips to the warehouse are needed. Also, because documents and their content are managed and searchable electronically, hours of sifting through filing cabinets are cut entirely.
- Waiting – With better inventory visibility and proactive supplier data and document management, less time is spent on waiting for information that is needed to make business go. Audits are easier and speedier, and every department has the necessary supplier information critical to them.
- Defects – With lines running better because only in-spec materials and ingredients are used for manufacturing, companies reduces defects, which lowers cost of poor quality and increases profitability.

About TraceGains
TraceGains (http://www.tracegains.com) is for quality, purchasing, product development, and other departments, that are burdened with manually managing suppliers and documents. TraceGains delivers full-service supplier, compliance, and regulatory document management solutions, including FSMA and GFSI. Unlike manual, ERP, or traditional document systems, TraceGains extracts data from documents and automatically takes action. TraceGains is proven to empower people to quickly solve problems, speed audits, and simplify continuous product improvement.

Supplier documentation storage, whether in file cabinets or in digital formats, may satisfy regulatory retention requirements, but does little to systematically unlock the wealth of business, compliance, and regulatory information they contain and you require on a daily basis to operate successfully.

By automatically analyzing and scorecarding supplier-provided documentation as it is received—such as certificates of analysis, qualification questionnaires, audit documents and their results, certifications (Kosher, Organic, etc.), insurance certificates, allergen questionnaires, and other import requirements (COOL, C-TPAT, FSMA, GFSI), among others—TraceGains helps food and nutraceutical manufacturers and ingredient processors automate document management, meet regulatory and industry compliance requirements, identify best and worst suppliers, source better with less risk, automatically raise product quality, and painlessly perform or participate in audits, all without needing to involve the IT department to help with complex technology.

TraceGains customers experience on average a 56% reduction in out-of-spec lot receipts, and a 20% reduction in attribute variability, resulting in enhanced continuous improvement, better performing ingredient and raw material inventory, improved cash flow, and long-term brand protection. Follow TraceGains on Twitter at @tracegains.

TraceGains, Inc.
http://www.tracegains.com
Marc Simony, Director of Marketing
pr@tracegains.com
720-465-9400