Concrete Mixes and Products Management
QESTMix provides tools which allow concrete producers to design, monitor, analyze, optimize, manage and adjust concrete mixes quickly and easily, resulting in significant savings in concrete production costs.
Utilize raw material and concrete test quality control data (that originate in QEST Platform), along with concrete production data (batch records) and costs (raw material, cartages, etc.) to design your concrete mixes.
Group mixes in families, based on function, at different strength grades to manage them easier and more accurately.
Distinguish between concrete mixes (what the technical manager designs and the plant manufactures) and concrete products (what the customer purchases) to maximize production flexibility and profit opportunities.
Interface with common production systems to batch these mixes electronically. In all, digitize the concrete design process and electronically pass concrete recipes to common production/batching systems.
Concrete Production Quality Control
QEST Platform is a complete solution for the testing of concrete both in its wet and its hardened state. It includes support for sampling workflows (both for concrete specimens and for aggregates) and it is a full testing suite for concrete and aggregates laboratory testing.
As QEST Platform has been used by virtually all the leading concrete manufacturers in Australia for decades (we estimate that around two thirds of all concrete produced in Australia would have been designed and/or tested by a QEST product) the tools have become very refined. Automation and ‘production-lining’ in the laboratory are supported with thoughtfully designed workflows, equipment interfacing, weigh/measure/crush jigs for concrete specimens, etc.
Integrate your Software Systems
Spectra QEST has been supplying very sophisticated, bespoke interfaces to concrete manufacturers to bring together ERP data (material availability and costs, cartage costs, etc.), concrete mix design data, concrete batching data, quality control data for concrete specimens, sands and aggregates, etc.
As these systems are used slightly differently in practice by different manufacturers, Spectra QEST has developed invaluable experience over the past three decades to be able to design and develop interfaces that offer powerful and practical solutions to the concrete manufacturer’s Technical Department. Contact us to find out more.
The Benefits
Concrete manufacturers can enjoy a fully featured end-to-end mix management and QC solution:
Field Technician Scheduling
Schedule field technicians using drag and drop scheduling to get a full picture of the workday and avoid conflicts.
Send automated notifications to field technicians about their upcoming work and receive automated notifications when they reject or accept the work and when they have finished their allocated task(s).
Support for Field Testing
Provide field technicians with built-in, connected data entry screens designed for efficiency and accuracy with pre-defined forms and dropdown menus. Suitable for aggregates sampling, concrete cubes and cylinders sampling and wet state testing.
Support for Laboratory Testing
Full LIMS functionality to make your lab(s) run efficiently and accurately. Manage the samples and tests and database everything for quality analysis purposes.
Specialist Mix Management System
Design concrete mixes and group them in functional families. Differentiates between concrete mixes and products. Uses the concept of change points to rapidly adjust cement levels in a mix family. Maintains mix and material cost histories.
System Integration
Integrate seamlessly with general, specialized and bespoke ERP, production, financial, planning and other systems. Share information on customers, projects, billing, resourcing, production, etc. Previous integrations have included, but are not limited to, SAP, Oracle Financials, Lawson, BST, Deltek (multiple versions), Command Alkon, etc.
Quality Control
Efficient storage, searching and analysis of test results enables reporting for quality control and quality assurance purposes, including historical material performance tables and charts.
Frequently Asked Questions
Below is a selection of questions that customers ask us often.
QESTMix software product has been designed to support the relatively unique Australian concrete manufacturing environment which is very dynamic, where the vast majority of all concrete produced is manufactured to a performance specification, not to a fixed recipe. Consequently, the Technical Department in a concrete producer has significant freedom to keep concrete mixes cost- and performance-optimized as production variables change.
This environment is not as common in Spectra QEST’s other markets, and so QESTMix system is available exclusively to the Australian market.
Concrete producers in the United States, United Kingdom and in the other markets Spectra QEST operates, have access to a full-featured quality control system that can assist them make and track concrete and aggregates samples, test them in the field and in the laboratory as appropriate, database the test results, report concrete and aggregates performance to clients and (most importantly) mine the database testing results for quality control purposes.