How a Food Engineer Builds and Manages Coke Canada’s Quality Systems with No-Code
Nanci Dias Paschier de Castro was never trained in coding apps during her academic years. However, currently, she is a superstar app builder at Coke Canada. She is the go-to person for numerous departments that require digital solutions for their manual processes. Digital solutions, that function at a scale that sprawls across 40 manufacturing and distribution plants of Coke Canada.
Gigantic processes, multiple stake holders, and thousands of employees. To build apps, let alone systems of apps, for an enormous manufacturing company without any prior software making experience is no easy feat. Which is why we don’t call Ms Dias an expert Softools App Builder without celebrating the spirit of No-Code.
We interviewed Ms Dias very recently, and this blog features her insights and experience of using no-code at scale. It is defies belief that she has been a Softools app builder for only a year so far, and built numerous apps which are currently a part of Coke Canada’s daily operations.
Softools: You've been working with Coke Canada for three years now. Can you tell us about your background, have you built apps before?
Nanci: I'm from Brazil. I joined Coca-Cola as a food engineer in October 2019, working in the quality, health and safety, and environment areas. So we call this, QHSE. Also, I'm a system analyst, and among system analysts, I'm working in the corporate area.
This is my first time building apps, I have no technical computer engineering background.
I think it was in 2021, the middle of the year, when I started training myself in Softools and recently got my Expert App Builder badge!.
Softools: How did you first start with Softools and nocode? What was the journey like?
Nanci: We have a lot of systems to manage, which used to be very challenging because we had only Excel files when I joined. So when you talk about quality and safety and the environment, you can imagine how many KPIs you need to manage. Everything was on Excel files.
Everybody from all the plants had access to these shared Excel files, and they all used to input information there. Resulting in a lot of editing and fixing work before the Quality Managers could compile the reports monthly to show their KPIs and progress to the leadership team. There’s a large number of KPIs that we need to look after, when it comes to quality environment and safety, they’re calculated by how the production plants are working along with other stakeholders like Co-Packers and distribution centres. We have 40 such plants where all this information is coming from.
In an Excel file, you cannot have correct information always because people can make mistakes. For example, they can type the wrong word without an S or with a double S.
I was responsible for a specific KPI - nonconformance hold-log. When the time for monthly reports came, instead of spending just an hour on the KPI calculation, I would spend the whole day manually fixing things because my spreadsheet wouldn’t work. My responsibility was to prepare a report for all the plants.
When I finished my app builder training in April last year, I suggested to my team lead if I could build an app for managing the hold-log better. So I built the NCR Hold Log, my first app.
Softools: How has your experience been after that first app, did you build more? What was the reaction like from your team?
Nanci: Oh yes, when after I finished my first official app, I got very good at building workflows and expressions. So after that, my boss Andrea and I are in a meeting, we often go like “Can we put this on Softools?”, and then she says “Yeah, it’s a good idea, let’s put this on Softools!” hahaha.
Now when other teams from the corporate area want to specific information and KPIs automated, they ask me to build an app for them on Softools. I have built around 5 apps till now, and I am working on another one presently.
While we’re working on bringing you more insights from our app builders, you can get the highlights of Ms Dias’s interview below.
We give a special thanks and a big shoutout to Ms Dias for being an amazing sport and collaborating with us for this interview.