In practice: Jonker & Schut
Our users know Certifeye inside out. How does the platform help them with recurring administrative work? Today we give the floor to Anton Heintjes, account manager, and Tom Nijhof, quality manager at Jonker & Schut. They have been working with Certifeye since 2021 and are happy to share their experiences in packaging and repackaging powdered dairy products and certificate management.
‘Certifeye makes certificate management scalable which is super important to us’
‘It doesn’t matter how many suppliers you have to request and manage certificates and documents from. If you secure them with a well-functioning system like Certifeye, numbers don’t matter. Certifeye makes certificate management scalable and that scalability is super important to us,’ says Anton Heintjes, account manager at Jonker & Schut. His colleague and quality manager Tom Nijhof adds: ‘The companies we supply products to want to know whether our suppliers and ourselves are certified. With Certifeye, we can very easily check who and what has been approved and manage our extensive certificate management.’
Strict controls
The bulk of Jonker & Schut’s production chain consists of powdered dairy products, which are subject to strict supervision by a variety of regulatory organisations. The organisation has the appropriate halal and kosher certificates and thus a well-deserved place in the associated supply chain. Added to this are ongoing audits by the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) and the Netherlands Controlling Body for Quality Affairs (COKZ). All this adds up to around 50 audits a year.
Accurate and careful chain registration
Certification bodies from all over the world visit the company to check whether the products they work with consist of kosher and halal-certified raw materials. Every year, hundreds of certificates and documents are requested for this purpose and managed with the online platform. After all, many foods we consume every day contain dairy components: from baking products, bread, soft drinks and chocolate to beer, sports nutrition and even medicine. This is a wide range of products. Upon delivery of the products, Jonker & Schut must also be able to present its own certifications.
Gatekeeper function to safeguard the chain
The processes require accurate and careful chain registration. ‘Jonker & Schut fulfils a gatekeeper function in the chain,’ says Anton. ‘We are a service company, not a product owner. Customers buy powders and then sell them. We pack and transport. Upon delivery, we have to be able to prove that the products we transport have actually been produced kosher and halal. Someone has to secure the chain. To manage that process, we use Certifeye.’
Hours spent on mail traffic
Previously, required certificates were stored in folders on a computer. If anything changed, Jonker & Smit’s quality controllers spent hours sending e-mails around. Tom: ‘We did not get alerted when a certificate expired. Every year, hundreds of e-mails went out asking departments, customers and suppliers whether documents needed replacing or updating. You often got back incomplete information, or the message that the rest would follow or come a bit later. Of course, that didn’t happen and you had to continue the hassle’.
Smooth certificate management
‘This process now runs much more smoothly with Certifeye. The platform takes a burden off of our shuolders and keeps our certificate management up to date. Mails are automatically sent out when a new certificate is needed or an update is due.’ Ton and Anton foresee that certificate delivery and management will only increase in the future. ‘Customers, suppliers and manufacturers increasingly want to know exactly what products consist of and where they come from.’
Certificate management as an integral part of QMS
Good certificate and document management requires good organisation and record-keeping. ‘Laws and regulations are changing by the day. There is more and more supervision coming our way, as we sail along with the customer’s requirements. For us, Certifeye is the only means by which we can secure these processes.’ This is why certificate management is an integral part of Jonker & Schut’s QMS. ‘Certifeye will be integrated deeper and deeper into our quality management, so we will use the platform more and more.’
Creating surveys and questionnaires with Certifeye
Anton and Tom are already preparing to use Certifeye for surveys and questionnaires towards suppliers. Quality-oriented questionnaires and customer satisfaction tests are being considered for this purpose. ‘We are CSR certified and are considering sending out questionnaires about this. But that is something for the future. Right now, we are mainly concerned with making sure that halal and kosher products are properly secured.’
Certifeye the solution in terms of convenience and time saving
Good examples lead to action. Relations at Jonker & Schut have had their eye on Certifeye and started using it. Anton: ‘I think many companies would be jealous of us if they saw how little time we spend on certificate management, because everything happens automatically here. If you want to incorporate certificate management in your quality system, Certifeye is the best solution given the convenience and time savings.’
