How Reyes Coca Cola is delivering Operational Excellence and Sustainable Digitization using Softools NoCode platform
Large manufacturing companies employ numerous processes to drive their operations. Core processes, such as material and resource planning and order processing are handled by ERP systems such as SAP but hundreds of other necessary activities are not IT-enabled and there is simply not the time, resources or budgets to address this demand for process digitisation using traditional IT, code-based methods.
The above fact also plays a factor in why employees resort to running their operations manually on excel sheets and siloed apps for the majority of the time.
However, when Nikki Gribble was called to the challenge of digitising quality and food safety operations for Reyes Coca Cola Bottling’s 28+ facilities, she created company-wide impacts nobody could have imagined.
As a DC Quality Technical Manager, Ms Gribble started building no-code apps using Softools in 2019. Her first app is still in use today, raking up 100% completion rates on GMP inspections for the company.
During the past 3 years, the apps Ms Gribble built have boosted their weekly quality inspection completion rates from 60% to 97% across 28 manufacturing and distribution facilities. Moreover, in 2022, their quarterly inspection completion rates surged from 20% to 100% for all their facilities.
The Softools team interviewed Ms Gribble recently, where she shares her journey of building 30+ apps, the challenges she’s been solving, and how she approaches no-code app building with Softools.
Softools: What does your average day look like at work?
Ms Gribble: I am the DC quality technical manager for Reyes Coca Cola Bottling. We cover the Midwest and west portions of the United States. And my average day is helping the distribution centres (DCs) with quality and food safety issues. It could be regulatory inspections, it could be company inspections, it could be problems with our product, anything like that. I'm basically there to help the distribution centres day-to-day.
Softools: How did you first start building with Softools No-Code Platform?
Ms Gribble: So my boss, Don - Vice President of quality for Reyes Coca Cola - had rolled out a production centre GMP inspection in Softools. All of our production centres were completing the inspection every month. But I wasn't really in that role at the time when he rolled it out. So I knew about Softools, but I didn't really have any interaction with it.
And then I got this role, and Don said, “Hey, would you like to build an app for the distribution centres so that they could do GOP inspections?” And I said “Sure!”
So then I started learning about Softools, I took the class with Mercedes, and she just started showing us what to do. And then it just kind of snowballed from there. At first, I'm not going to say it was easy. It was challenging because you kind of have to think about it a little different than how you might think about other things, especially when not having any experience in app building before.
But once I got the hang of it, it just started going like, once I got the hang of it and I kind of understood the structure.
Once I practised the app structures, the elements and the flows, it became a smooth journey from then on.
Here are some highlights from the interview:
Softools: Please tell us about a few recent apps you have built and the challenges you have solved with no code
Ms Gribble: Our parent company has a set of requirements that cover a wide spectrum of areas. A lot of them are safety and building-related, and they're all at different frequencies. It could be weekly, monthly, quarterly, biannual, annual, and so on – a total of twelve different frequencies that are set at which these inspections have to be completed.
And I have 28 facilities that have to complete these inspections, but no two facilities are the same. So just because it's a required inspection doesn't mean it's necessarily applicable to every single facility. So we had to figure out a way of rolling these inspections out so that we were in compliance with our parent company requirements, but in a way where we could filter it so that the DCs were only doing what was actually required in their facility and didn't really have to see the things that weren't required and also communicate the different frequencies.
We built the apps on Softools. There's one app for every set frequency. So there's a weekly, a monthly, a quarterly biannual, and so forth. And we built-in filtering. We have what I call a facility database. And in that app is a list of all of our facilities and has all of the sections that are required to be inspected and whether it's applicable to each facility.
By doing this, when we start a weekly inspection and select Facility A, only the sections applicable to Facility A show up on the inspection report. We then made it so that the inspection automatically generates every Monday for the weekly inspection and a notification is sent to the facility. Whoever has been deemed responsible for completing the inspection receives a notification that it is due. And then they can just click on the link in the email, go to the inspection and complete it to improve visibility and also to improve completion of the inspection because there are so many and everybody gets so many emails every day.
When we first rolled it out back in 2020 and last year, we struggled with the weekly inspection, we were at maybe a 60% completion for the quarterly. If it was a good quarter, maybe 20% of our facilities completed it. So this year, in 2022, we added Power Bi integration to our Softools apps. So essentially, Power Bi every morning pulls all of the latest data from all twelve different inspection apps, takes that data and looks at what's complete and what's not complete.
And then the DC can go right into the report, filter to them, and they'll see exactly what they haven't completed yet. They'll see what they have completed and if they have 100% completion, they can look at their compliance so they can see how it ended up by rolling out that Power Bi report.
And we just did it this year, maybe two months ago, we have seen weekly inspection completion go from 60% to, I would say probably 97%. Right now, it kind of varies by market unit. And we have seen quarterly inspection completion go from 20% to 100% completion. All of our facilities completed Q One 2022. So that's amazing how we were able to just kind of streamline the process, take something that was very complicated and very overwhelming, use Softools to really be able to personalize it for every distribution centre and then communicate it to them in a way that simplified it even more. And so it's been a huge help to our facilities being able to do it this way.
Softools: You’ve come a long way as an app builder. If you look at the past and what’s coming next, how would you describe your impact as a no-code app builder and a process expert?
Ms Gribble: I started building apps back in 2019. The first app that I built was the DC GMP inspection that my boss asked me to build. We're still using it today. Since we implemented that app and that inspection, we've been at 100% completion. So that has been just a great tool for us. I use Softools pretty much every day, so I have built apps in there for pretty much, I think four or five different departments within Reyes Coca Cola using the Softools platform in one way or another.
Each Department uses it differently. We are now in the process of looking at, like, if we have a hold in the supply chain. Let's say one of our production facilities needs to put their product on hold, and it's in one of our DCs. We're looking at how we can use Softools in order to streamline that process so that we're not having to try to search for everybody's contact and things like that. We want to build an app where we can just automatically send out that notification to all of our facilities. So that's kind of on our radar right now, trying to figure out how we can use it in more crucial, time-sensitive areas of the business so that we can just improve efficiency and response time.
I've built about 30 apps now. I would say at least 25 of them are used daily. We're looking at what area we can move into next and just really utilize Softools. And we've mainly implemented it in the Midwest distribution centres over since 2019. We are now integrating with our West Coast, and it is now all being rolled out for the West Coast as well. So we're spreading our use of Softools and we're bringing everybody on board using the same apps. And so far, so good. So far, it's been really successful and it's been a very smooth transition.
Conclusion
We are looking forward to more such inspiration to thrive in the Softools Community. It’s our huge honour to give a shout out to Ms Gribble for her untiring work ethic and the spirit of spontaneity and for giving us her time for the interview.