Cal-Maine Foods, the largest producer and distributor of eggs in the United States, implemented the Forms on Fire mobile app to streamline their inspection process.
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Optimize Operations With a Facility Inspection Checklist App
Martha Kendall Custard
Making the switch to a facility inspection checklist app revolutionizes the way you manage inspections.
Instead of relying on cumbersome, paper-based checklists and manual data entry, digital facility management checklists allow you to take advantage of streamlined digital processes crucial for maintaining compliance and operational efficiency in a variety of industries.
In this blog post, we’re digging into why and how you should maximize productivity with a facility inspection checklist app.
What is a Facility Inspection Checklist App?
A facility inspection checklist app is a digital tool that streamlines and standardizes the process of conducting facility inspections.
These apps allow you to create customizable facility assessment checklists according to the specific industry or facility requirements. This flexibility makes them useful for a variety of industries, from agriculture to warehouse management, healthcare, retail, and beyond.
Digital facility inspection checklists replace manual alternatives that rely on spreadsheets or old-fashioned paper and pen, offering transformative advantages for your organization’s facility inspections. Employees access the facility management checklist from a mobile device and complete the form as they walk through the inspection process, capturing real-time data through text input, photos, GPS coordinates, checkboxes, and date pickers as they go.
After completing an inspection, employees can generate detailed reports and distribute building inspection checklist PDFs to relevant stakeholders. Identified issues can then be assigned to the employee responsible for addressing them in a task list.
Benefits of Using a Facility Inspection App
Facility inspection checklist apps can transform your organization by enhancing the efficiency, accuracy, and overall effectiveness of your inspections. Here are some key advantages:
Save Time
Digital inspections are faster than paper-based methods, allowing inspectors to complete more inspections in less time.
Increase Efficiency
Instead of carrying paper checklists and manually recording data, employees perform inspections from mobile devices with or without internet connectivity.
When internet connectivity is restored, the data automatically syncs with a system that aggregates all your organization’s insights, making it super easy for stakeholders to access relevant data from their own devices at any time.
This method of standardizing and streamlining the inspection process can make your organization more efficient and productive.
Improve Accuracy
Digital data capture minimizes the risk of errors, ensuring more accurate inspection reports and compliance records. This accuracy is crucial for maintaining high standards and avoiding potential legal issues.
Record Real-Time Insights
Digital facility inspection checklists enable employees to record detailed inspection data on the go. They produce real-time insights that extend beyond yes/no checkboxes and textbox fields by allowing users to capture photo evidence, geographical location data, and even extra notes.
Your organization can use this data to identify issues promptly and take proactive steps to correct them– all within the facility management app’s inspection workflow.
Enhance Collaboration
Mobile-centric inspection checklist apps facilitate seamless collaboration between inspectors, managers, and stakeholders. One person can perform an inspection and assign action items that can be accessed and carried out by someone else at a later time. These tools can also turn the insights into detailed analytics reports to be shared across the organization.
These collaboration features result in more effective communication and coordination, which leads to better decision-making and a more cohesive inspection process.
Reduce Costs
Facility inspection checklist apps can lower inspection-related costs in a number of ways. Streamlining the inspection process saves time and boosts productivity, which translates to fewer paid hours. Creating a more effective, efficient inspection process helps your organization identify and address issues early. This can reduce maintenance costs and prevent expensive downtime. And if you’re transitioning from paper checklists, you bypass the financial and environmental costs associated with printing, storing, and handling paper documents.
Secure Compliance
Facility inspection checklist apps enhance data management practices by maintaining organized, accessible, highly detailed digital records. This simplifies the process of demonstrating compliance with regulations, standards, and audit requirements, reducing the administrative burden on your team.
Make Data-Driven Decisions
Analytics tools within the facility management app provide actionable insights, allowing organizations to optimize processes, allocate resources efficiently, and prioritize tasks based on data trends. This data-driven approach leads to better overall performance and continuous improvement.
Case study: How Cal-Maine Foods Streamlined its Inspection Process With the Forms on Fire Mobile App
Problem
Previously Cal-Maine’s on-site hen-house inspections were labor-intensive, involving manual data entry and excessive paperwork. They decided to eliminate paper forms and transition to a facility inspection checklist app to eliminate the struggle of conducting inspections across geographically dispersed farms with limited internet connectivity.
Solution
The Forms on Fire app provided Cal-Maine Foods with a robust facility inspection solution that works offline, allowing inspectors to collect crucial data in real time using mobile devices. Inspectors can take photos, read barcodes, capture signatures, and dynamically trigger additional questions based on previous answers. Once back online, the data is uploaded to the company’s main database.
Results
Cal-Maine’s digital transformation eliminated paper forms and manual data entry, enabling efficient and accurate data collection. Because the app is affordable, the return on investment is high.
Additionally, the app’s in-depth analytics and purpose-built dashboards help Cal-Maine analyze collected data and make informed business decisions. This enhanced data access and analysis capability is critical for maintaining sanitation, meeting safety and quality standards, promoting sustainability, and ensuring regulatory compliance. Here’s what Bob Gilmore, IT Director at Cal-Maine Foods had to say:
"After all, data is not worth anything unless you have access to that data and can analyze it to help manage the business better. It doesn’t matter what your business is. If you’re collecting data, you need to be able to have access to that data to make informed business decisions. That’s what Forms On Fire mobile app does for us."
Another important benefit to Forms on Fire is the customer service. According to Bob:
"The customer service is super. We look at our vendor relations as partnerships, and the support we receive from Forms On Fire really solidifies that partnership."
How to use a facility inspection checklist app template
Forms on Fire is fully customizable, but that doesn’t mean you have to start from scratch. The app is pre-loaded with a variety of templates you can use as-is or adjust to fit your unique needs.
For example, the standard facility inspection checklist template contains the most common questions necessary to ensure a generic facility’s safety and compliance. These questions are split into three categories:
- General: Yes/no questions about typical facility safety hazards like tripping hazards, load limits, guard rails, ventilation, equipment storage, exits, and lighting.
- Fire: Yes/no questions about fire hazards, extinguishers, and emergency exits.
- Electrical: Yes/no questions about the condition of power cords, frayed wires, electrical circuit access, and other electrical safety measures.
The “Charts” tab displays current and previous scores for each inspection category. “Maps” allow you to capture and attach geographical data to your inspection results.
Each tab of the facility inspection template can also have a field where the user can request a work order. If the inspector notices an action item that requires attention, they can assign a work order without pausing the inspection or leaving the app.
Best Practices for Implementing Your Facility Inspection Checklist App
Optimizing your facility inspection process doesn’t stop when you download the app. Here are our expert implementation tips to help you get the most out of your digital inspection workflow:
Define Clear Objectives
Identify key objectives such as improving efficiency, enhancing safety, or meeting regulatory requirements to guide app implementation.
Customize Your Facility Inspection Checklist
Tailor inspection checklists to your organization's specific needs, ensuring they reflect industry standards, compliance requirements, and operational priorities.
Train Users
Provide comprehensive training to inspectors and users to familiarize them with the app's features, workflows, and best practices. You can even connect users with the app’s support team so they know where to find help if the need arises.
Encourage Consistent Usage
Encourage consistent app usage to safeguard data accuracy and compliance. The more you use the app, the better your results will be.
Utilize Analytics
Leverage analytics tools to analyze inspection data, identify trends, predict maintenance needs, and make data-driven business decisions.
Integrate Your Facility Inspection Checklist App With Other Systems
Integrate the app with existing systems such as asset management, maintenance, or workflow automation platforms for seamless data flow and process optimization.
Collect Feedback
Gather feedback from users to continuously improve the app's functionality, usability, and effectiveness in meeting organizational goals.
Start Optimizing Your Inspection Workflow Today
Facility inspection apps are indispensable tools for modern facility management. If you want to elevate your inspection processes and save time, reduce costs, improve collaboration, and safeguard compliance, ditch your paper checklists and disparate spreadsheets and start customizing a facility inspection checklist app that allows your team to record more detailed, organized, actionable data.
Ready to optimize your inspection workflow with digital checklists? Start your 14-day free trial today, no credit card required.
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