How a cannabis testing lab got ready for market growth
LabPlex is a cannabis and hemp testing laboratory based in California.
LabPlex protects and safeguards the safety of customers' cannabis products with an array of potency, microbial, pesticide, solvent, moisture and mycotoxin testing - ensuring a quality end product for consumers.
LabPlex must meet the regulatory demands of ISO 17025 and California's Bureau of Cannabis Control.
But LabPlex was using a basic and manual paper-based operational approach, without a formal eQMS or LIMS in place.
The organization wanted to implement a trusted, quality-centric operation, underpinned by a digital quality system.
Above all, as the cannabis market expands and certain states compare regulatory standards with a view to an optimal, rigorous benchmark of quality, LabPlex wanted to prove it was meeting the highest standards of the industry and position itself to grow with the market.
Quality Manager Ania Washington led the search for a new quality management system.
Ania had two primary criteria for the perfect eQMS:
1) Ease of use
2) Flexibility
Qualio was the only eQMS platform which matched these requirements, and after a detailed search Ania and LabPlex became Qualio customers.
All LabPlex documentation now lives in Qualio, providing a central repository of quality information perfect for demonstrating trust to customers and to ISO 17025 auditors.
New quality manager Valerie Orta struggled to find legacy documents, but can now locate Qualio documents in seconds.
As LabPlex grows and new employees are onboarded, they can be quickly upskilled and trained on SOPs with their new Qualio login.
And as internal audits are completed, findings can be quickly fed into Qualio Events for resolution and close-out, allowing Valerie and the team to drive continuous business-wide improvement.
I love the quiz functionality in Training and we're going to be adding that soon.
And I love the YouTube videos and the tips and tricks webinars for giving us more ideas.
Best of all, LabPlex's use of Qualio is only just beginning.
With ambitious plans to double headcount and expand rapidly in step with the cannabis market, the ability to manage and track document, training and event activity arms Valerie with the visibility she needs to guide LabPlex and ensure quality and compliance only gets stronger.
We continue to deal with the BCC on a regular basis and they're very meticulous.
Keeping on track of things, making sure things don't fall through the cracks, making sure we fix issues instead of not documenting them and seeing them happen over and over again - those are all the things that Qualio is going to help us with over the next year.
