Skip to main content

SQF Edition 10 audits start January 2027. Is your program ready? Learn more →

The Platform

Meet Beacon

The food safety and quality compliance AI platform

Explore platform
Audit-Ready AI

Every AI action, on the record

The audit trail writes itself.

  • Drafts SOPs and CAPAs from your data
  • Cites the exact SQF element
  • Logs every step for the auditor
Explore Audit-Ready AI

See it on your process

Book a demo
Expert Services

Consulting & Training

SQF certification, audit prep, and expert-led training

Advised by certified SQF lead auditors and HACCP Alliance instructors, from first certification through Edition 10.

Explore services
SQF Edition 10

Built in from day one

A structural update, not a refresh. The templates, records, and review workflows are already here.

Explore Edition 10

Not sure where to start?

Talk to an expert
Food Quality System & SPC

See the drift before it becomes a deviation

A quality system that only reacts to failures is running a month behind its own process. We build the other kind: specifications tied to disposition, control charts with limits from your own data, and a defined response when the chart speaks.

Have us review your quality plan Book a call

Not ready for a call? Tell us which measure drifts the most.

What it covers

A quality system that decides, not just detects

Detection is the easy half. The system we build closes the other half: who holds the product, who makes the disposition, and what changes so the same failure stops repeating.

Audit checklist 3 / 3

Out-of-specification result held as a non-conformance pending disposition in Beacon

We write specifications that state the limit, the method, and what happens on failure. An out-of-spec result opens a non-conformance and holds the lot until a disposition is made, so the spec is a control, not a reference document.

Explore Specifications With Teeth

Corrective action with root cause analysis linked to its source record in Beacon

Held product gets dispositioned by the people with authority to decide, and a repeating failure escalates into a corrective action with root cause and an owner. One connected record from the failed check to the closed fix.

Explore Disposition and CAPA

Quality trends measured against a prior-period baseline in Beacon

Quality data gets read against the prior period, so an adverse trend announces itself instead of hiding across a dozen closed records. The chart is only useful if someone is reading it, so the reading is built in.

Explore Trends Read Against Baseline
Talk through your quality plan
The process

From spec sheet to a process under control

The order matters. Specifications come first, because a chart without a disposition path just documents your failures more precisely. Then limits from your own data, charts where the operators are, and a response that runs without a meeting.

Start with a quality-plan review
1

Pick the measures that matter

1 week

Two or three to start: the fill or weight target where drift costs money, and the quality attributes your customers actually reject on.

2

Write the specifications

1-2 weeks

Limit, method, sampling, and the on-failure path: who holds, who decides, who signs. The spec becomes a control the moment it can stop product.

3

Baseline the process

2-4 weeks

Collect enough data to know how the process behaves when nothing is wrong. Control limits calculated from this baseline, not copied from the spec.

4

Chart at the line

1 week

Operators record where they work and the chart updates as they do. A rule violation flags immediately, with the response procedure attached.

5

Define the response

1 week

For each rule that can fire: what gets checked, what gets held, and when it escalates to a non-conformance. Decided in daylight, not mid-incident.

6

Read capability, then improve

quarterly

Capability against spec tells you whether the process has margin or is coasting on luck. That number decides where the next improvement effort goes.

The standard

What separates SPC from a chart on the wall.

Plenty of plants have charts. Far fewer have a process that answers to them.

1

Limits from data

Not from the spec sheet

Control limits copied from spec limits defeat the whole method. The process's own baseline sets the limits, or the chart is theater.

2

Charted at the line

Not month-end

A signal found in a month-end review is a post-mortem. The chart earns its keep in the half hour after the point lands on it.

3

A defined response

Decided before it fires

Every rule that can fire has a written answer: check what, hold what, escalate when. Otherwise the signal trains people to look away.

4

Capability, not hope

Margin you can prove

Capability against spec limits says whether the process has real margin. It is the difference between passing and knowing why you pass.

Not sure your charts would pass this list. Tell us which measure drifts the most and we'll tell you what we'd chart first.

Who leads it

Our quality-system work is led by a former SQF Lead Auditor who has seen every version of the chart on the wall and knows the difference between a quality plan that decides and one that files. Meet Jeff.

7,500+ audits on the bench Audit-side since 1977 1 working SQF plant
Beacon Platform

Your quality system runs in Beacon. Charts included.

Specifications, non-conformances, dispositions, and corrective actions live on one connected record, and the SPC module charts your measures with rule violations flagged as they happen. See how the quality module works.

Specifications with limits, methods, and on-failure paths
Out-of-spec results open a non-conformance and hold the lot
SPC series for the measures you choose to chart
Control limits calculated from your own process data
Rule violations flagged the moment they happen
Capability tracked against your spec limits
Dispositions signed by the people with authority
Repeat failures escalated to corrective action
CAPA effectiveness criteria beside the verified outcome recorded against them in Beacon

Any consultant can write you a quality manual. The difference is whether the process is measurably under control a year later. See why teams build it with us.

Put control limits on the measures that cost you money

Bring your spec sheet and your most troublesome measure. In 20 minutes you'll know whether SPC would pay for itself on your line and where to start.

Book a call Building the wider management system? See FSMS consulting

Prefer the phone? (313) 484-4887

What happens next

01

Discovery call

About your facility and goals. Not a sales pitch.

02

See it in action

A live walkthrough of Beacon scoped to your operation.

03

Custom proposal

Software, consulting, and training sized to your facility.

You'll talk with a food safety expert, not a sales rep.

20 minutes · No commitment · No pressure

Start with one measure

Tell us which measure drifts the most

Net weight, fill, moisture, seal strength: name the one that keeps producing surprises. We come back with a read on whether it belongs on a chart, what the baseline would take, and what the first month would likely find.

A read on where SPC would pay for itself first
What your specs are missing on the on-failure path
No commitment. Just a conversation
FAQ

Quality system and SPC questions, answered

Common questions from QA teams building a quality plan or bringing SPC to the line.

Statistical process control: charting a measure that matters (net weight, fill volume, seal strength, moisture, temperature) against limits calculated from how your process actually behaves. The chart tells you when the process has changed before the change produces an out-of-spec lot. In food plants it is most valuable on fill and weight control, where drift costs real money in giveaway long before it costs you a compliance problem.
Spec limits are the customer's voice: the range the product must be inside. Control limits are the process's voice: the range your process produces when nothing has changed, calculated from your own data. A process can run comfortably inside spec while drifting steadily toward the edge. Control limits catch the drift; spec limits only catch the failure.
GFSI schemes require you to monitor process controls and act on the results; they do not mandate control charts specifically. The push usually comes from customers, co-manufacturing agreements, and net-weight regulation, or from your own giveaway numbers. Facilities that adopt SPC rarely do it for the auditor. They do it because the first month of charting usually finds money.
No. The statistics are settled and the software does the math. What you need is someone who decides which measures matter, where the data comes from, and what the response is when a rule fires. That is quality management, not statistics, and it is what we set up with your team.
Fewer than you think. Start with the two or three where drift costs the most: usually a fill or weight target and one or two critical quality attributes. A wall of charts nobody responds to is worse than three charts with a defined response, because it trains the team that signals do not matter.
There is a defined response, decided before it happens: who looks, what they check, and when product gets held. An out-of-control signal with no response procedure is just decoration. When the signal does produce out-of-spec product, the lot goes through the same non-conformance and disposition path every other quality failure follows.
Specifications, non-conformances, dispositions, and corrective actions run in Beacon as one connected record, and its SPC module charts your measures against control limits with rule violations flagged as they happen, capability tracked against spec. See how the quality module works.