Tag Archives: Focus Article

Laura Lombard, IMEPIK
FST Soapbox

Is Your Facility Properly Prepared to Ensure Preventive Controls are Met?

By Laura Lombard
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Laura Lombard, IMEPIK

Under FSMA, you are required to have at least one Preventive Control Qualified Individual (PCQI) on your staff at all times to build and manage your food safety plan(s) for your manufacturing facilities. Per the regulation, PCQIs “have successfully completed training in the development and application of risk-based preventive controls at least equivalent to that received under a standardized curriculum recognized as adequate by FDA or be otherwise qualified through job experience to develop and apply a food safety system.” (Subpart C Section 117.180 (c) (1))

First and foremost, have you met the basic requirement of having at least one trained PCQI? There are now both online and in-person options to ensure your that food safety or quality assurance manager has had the proper training. Most online options require set times and dates like the in-person version to complete the training. Only one PCQI training currently on the market is completely self-paced and available 24-7. No matter which option you choose, it is a baseline that you ensure you have checked that regulatory box before the FDA comes to inspect your facility.

But what if your PCQI needs to take extended medical leave or moves on to another job? It is a proactive and smart move to have a back-up PCQI trained to both help support your PCQI under regular circumstances and be ready to step in if your quality assurance manager becomes unavailable. For a relatively small investment, you can ensure your company is meeting the regulatory requirement and has the training to provide a safe, quality product.

The FSMA regulation does not require you to have a PCQI for every facility but does require an individual food safety plan per location. Depending on how many facilities your particular company has, you may want to consider more than one PCQI to ensure that food safety plans are regularly updated and properly implemented. Many companies are now training the entire quality assurance department or a facility cross-functional team to be PCQIs and participate on the food safety team. Again, the relatively small investment in properly training personnel can save your company hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in costly recalls, lost revenue due to negative brand reputation, and FDA fines. The average recall costs $10 million, not including brand damage and lost customers.

It is simply prudent to invest in PCQI training beyond the basic requirement of the FSMA regulation. Companies should train their quality assurance or food safety staff at the PCQI level to protect a company’s product quality, brand and customer base. The fewer food safety-related claims you have, the more that can be saved in costly recalls, loss of current or potential customers, and brand reputation. Lastly, a company with a robust safety culture has a competitive advantage over competitors who are less inclined to invest sufficiently in their food safety training and may suffer financial repercussions and damage to reputation as a result of recalls and customer quality assurance complaints.

Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

This Bufala Is No Bufala

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Bufala
Find examples of these records and more in the Food Fraud Database.

Who doesn’t enjoy a nice Insalata Caprese or pizza Margherita with fresh tomatoes and mozzarella? Based on regulations in the EU and Italy, mozzarella di bufala is supposed to be made with buffalo milk only. “Bufala” in Italian may also mean “media hoax”, however, in this case, science shows that there is indeed “no bufala”. Multiple reaction monitoring mass spectrometry brings wide-spread fraught to light, showing that two-thirds of the tested supermarket and restaurant products are made with much cheaper cow’s milk, according to a study published in Food Control.

Resources

Gunning, Y., et al. (July 2019). “Quantitative authenticity testing of buffalo mozzarella via αs1-Casein using multiple reaction monitoring mass spectrometry”. Food Control. Volume 101, Pages 189-197. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956713519300775?via%3Dihub

Third party certification program, FDA, audits, Food Safety Supply Chain Conference

Your Supply Chain in 2019: Top Considerations

By Maria Fontanazza
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Third party certification program, FDA, audits, Food Safety Supply Chain Conference

Last week industry gathered for the Food Safety Supply Chain conference at USP in Rockville, MD. The following are some quick highlights of insights they shared.

Most Common Form 483 Observations

Following FSVP inspections, the most common Form 483 observation was a company’s failure to develop an FSVP. From FY 2017 to present, the observation was cited 552 times, outweighing any other observation and underscoring the need for an educational component. – AJ Seaborn, supervisory consumer safety officer, division of import operations, ORA, FDA

FDA, Food Safety Supply Chain Conference
(left to right) AJ Seaborn, Lisa Ross and Priya Rathnam of FDA share an update on FSMA implementation at the 2019 Food Safety Supply Chain Conference

Top Citations for FY 2018

  • Hazard analysis (when a facility is not identifying a hazard that requires a preventive control)
  • Lack of a food safety plan. “There’s still work to be done on the education and outreach on this one.”
  • Equipment and utensils (GMP deficiency)
  • Allergen controls monitoring
  • Sanitation control verification procedures
  • Personnel (usually, this is related to a repeated issue)
    – Priya Rathnam, supervisory consumer safety officer, CFSAN, FDA

Critical Supplier Questions Must Be Asked

  • How do you choose and approve your suppliers?
  • What must be done to ensure that we aren’t receiving hazards from suppliers?
  • What requirements must be defined?
  • Does every supplier need to be audited?
  • Should we treat all suppliers equally? (No, it depends on their risk profile)
  • How do we ensure that our program is effective?
  • When working with suppliers, it’s important that your decisions are reproducible and that you apply the same risk methodology across the board. – Erika Miller, food safety specialist, D.L. Newslow & Associates, Inc.

“Before you can do anything to transform your business, you have to have visibility in your supply chain.” – George Dyche, senior director, innovations & solutions, Avery Dennison

“’Compliance’ should be replaced in industry with ‘commitment’…when you’re committed, compliance will follow.” – Felix Amiri, food sector chair, Global Coalition for Sustained Excellence in Food & Health Protection (GCSE-FHP)

Putting the “P” in CAPA = Getting out in front of issues before they happen. “Don’t wait for the consumer to get sick… if you have a recall, it means you haven’t done your work on the CAPA side.” – Andrew Kennedy, director, Global Traceability Center, IFT

Food Safety Supply Chain Conference
(left to right) Felix Amiri, Lucy Angarita and Andy Kennedy discusss supply chain vulnerabilities and solutions.

On critical success factors to establish a traceability program: Technology will never fix a company’s data quality or process issues. If you don’t already have it defined, you won’t get there. And after you understand the KPIs and goals, don’t give up. This doesn’t happen overnight. Engage your leadership, because the vision has to be from the top for others to also allocate the time and effort. “It’s a journey, not a destination. If you take your eyes off data quality, data quality goes down.” – Lucy Angarita, director, supply chain traceability, IPC/Subway

In 2018, 47% of recalls were allergen related, and this rate has increased. “People still don’t get [allergen labeling]”.  – Barry Parsons, senior consultant, PTI Consulting Group (Division of Paster Training)

On the significance of teaching truck drivers the importance of food safety risks: “They are part of our supply chain, and we need to incorporate them. It shouldn’t be out of sight, out of mind.” – Holly Mockus, senior industry analyst, Alchemy

Third party certification program, FDA, audits, Food Safety Supply Chain Conference
Trish Wester, chair of The Association of Food Safety Auditing Professionals, leads an FDA panel discussion about the Third-Party Certification Program. (left to right) Doriliz De Leon, program coordinator, accredited third-party certification program, FDA; Marla Keller, biologist, FDA; Marianne Fatica, policy analyst, Office of Compliance, FDA; Clinton Priestley, consumer safety officer, audit staff, human and animal food operations, ORA, FDA
Bob Pudlock, Gulf Stream Search
FST Soapbox

Architect the Perfect Food Safety Team: Capture Your Ideal Candidate and Set Them Up for Success

By Bob Pudlock
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Bob Pudlock, Gulf Stream Search

If there is one ingredient that contributes the most to a successful food safety team and culture, it’s the senior-most food safety officer taking full responsibility for the recruitment and on-boarding of each of its team members.

“But isn’t that HR’s job?”

“Isn’t that the talent acquisition team’s job?”

“Isn’t that what our internal recruiter is supposed to take care of?”

As an executive recruiter who is asked to transform food safety teams through new hires, I can say with 100% conviction that the answer is NO.

It’s your job as a food safety leader to make sure every step of the recruitment and on-boarding process, from the first connection with the potential candidate all the way through their first review, is performed flawlessly.

The following are some key benchmarks of a well-executed recruitment process.

  • The candidate and food safety leadership team have clear expectations of how the new hire will impact the business.
  • The candidate’s compensation expectations are aligned with the company’s capabilities, both in the short-term as well as in the future.
  • Each member of the food safety team is on the same page during the interview process. There’s a level of coordination and everyone has a role and responsibility that leaves a favorable impression on the candidate that “this is a strong food safety team and one I want to be a part of.”
  • The hiring team, because it’s been so thorough in its due diligence, has no underlying concerns about their decision.
  • The new hire knows when their first review will be, who it will be with, and what benchmarks they’ll be assessed against.
  • Offer, acceptance and start date are presented, accepted and committed to in less than three days.

What happens when YOU don’t take ownership of the candidate and new hire experience?

Bob Pudlock will be moderating the panel discussion, “Food Safety Leadership: Earning Respect”, at the 2019 Food Safety Consortium | October 1–3 | Schaumburg, ILWhen asked to describe why they left a role after less than six months, the most often heard reply is that the food safety leadership and/or recruiter promised something during the interview process and once on board, everything changed.

Another complaint that arises is that elements of relocation packages, sign-on bonuses, on-boarding and training are either not executed or not coordinated with what was promised during the interview process.

In the food safety space, an oft-held complaint is that the confidence and conviction of food safety leadership during the interview process disappears when the new hire arrives; the new hire experiences a lack of respect shown to food safety personnel, and their leadership team retreats in the background and doesn’t provide cover for the on-the-ground team.

It’s unfortunate but true—a misstep in the recruiting and on-boarding process in an otherwise flawlessly executed hiring process can have drastic consequences on a new hire’s experience.

Imagine a meal at a five-star restaurant with family and friends that goes off flawlessly, only to find out the next morning that half your guests are in the emergency room with food poisoning.

It’s no different when a new hire’s on-boarding experience destroys the goodwill that was created during the hiring process.

In talent acquisition, a flawlessly executed hiring process, followed by an on-boarding experience that aligns with what the new hire was promised during the interview process is the key to future employee referrals—no area of a food or beverage company needs more strong employee referrals than food safety.

It’s also a big part of why food safety staff can act with confidence in calling out protocol violations or unsafe practices that play out in facilities or with suppliers. When trust and goodwill with senior food safety leadership is in place, the food safety team can do their job knowing their boss has their back.

Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

This Smells Quite Fishy

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food fraud, Fish
Records involving fraud can be found in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne

In a EU-wide coordinated effort, more than a dozen members of an organized criminal group were arrested. The criminals were fishing with illegal methods, and processed and stored their catch in unsanitary conditions. Consumers’ health was possibly affected by the rotting fish being treated with bleach to mask unsavory smells, with the goal to sell the fish in multiple EU countries, yielding a revenue of more than €100,000 per year. In addition, the gang committed tax and money laundering crimes.

Resources

  1. EU-OCS Editor (May 16 2019). “Tons of contaminated fish seized in EU-wide operation”. EU-OCS Latest News on Crime and Security in Europe. Retrieved from https://eu-ocs.com/tons-of-contaminated-fish-seized-in-eu-wide-operation/
Megan Nichols
FST Soapbox

Technology Tools Improving Food Safety

By Megan Ray Nichols
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Megan Nichols

To cap off a tumultuous year for foodborne illnesses, the end of 2018 saw a rather large E. coli outbreak that affected several different types of lettuce. In all, about 62 people got sick in the United States, with another 29 affected in Canada. The outbreak was traced back to a farm in California thanks to a specific DNA fingerprint in the E. coli. It started in a water reservoir and spread to the nearby crops.

Unfortunately, the event was only one of two separate incidents involving romaine lettuce last year. Another E.coli outbreak was traced back to a source in Arizona. Are these outbreaks more common than we realize? The CDC estimates that 48 million Americans fall ill each year from foodborne pathogens. Of those who get sick, 128,000 have to be hospitalized, and about 3,000 perish.

It’s clear that the industry as a whole needs to buckle down and find more effective solutions, not just for preventing outbreaks but also for mitigating damage when they happen. A new level of safety and management can be achieved with the help of many new, innovative technologies.

The following are some of the technology tools shaping the future of food safety and quality management fields.

Blockchain

As a result of the E. coli outbreak, Walmart implemented blockchain technology to track leafy greens and boost supply chain transparency. The systems and infrastructure is anticipated to be in place by the end of 2019.

Blockchain is a secure, digital ledger. It holds information about various transactions and data, all of which are carried out on the network. It’s called a blockchain because each data set within the network is a chunk or “block,” and they’re all linked to one another—hence the chain portion of the name. What this allows for is complete transparency throughout the supply chain, because you can track goods from their origin all the way to distribution and sale.

Each block is essentially a chunk of information, and when it’s entered into the chain, it cannot be altered, modified or manipulated. It’s simply there for viewing publicly. You cannot alter information contained within a single block without modifying the entire chain—which operates much like a peer-to-peer network and is split across many devices and servers.
This unique form of security establishes trust, accuracy and a clear representation of what’s happening. It allows a company to track contaminated foods along their journey, stopping them before they contaminate other goods or reach customers.

Infrared Heating

Thanks to the rising popularity of ready-to-eat meals, the industry is under pressure to adopt preservation and pasteurization methods. Particularly, they must be able to sanitize foods and package them with minimal exposure and bacteria levels. This practice allows them to stay fresh for longer and protects customers from potential foodborne illness.

Infrared heating is a method of surface pasteurization, and has been used for meats such as ham. Infrared lamps radiate heat at low temperatures, effectively killing surface bacteria and contaminants. The idea is to decontaminate or sanitize the surface of foods before final packaging occurs.

Industrial IoT and Smart Sensors

The food and beverage industry has a rather unique challenge with regard to supply chain operations. Food may be clean and correctly handled at the source with no traces of contamination, but it’s then passed on to a third party, which changes the game. Maybe a refrigerated transport breaks down, and the food within is thawed out. Perhaps a distributor doesn’t appropriately store perishable goods, resulting in serious contamination.

This transportation stage can be more effectively tracked and optimized with the help of modern IoT and smart, connected sensors. RFID tags, for instance, can be embedded in the packaging of foods to track their movements and various stats. Additional sensors can monitor storage temps, travel times, unexpected exposure, package tears and more.

More importantly, they’re often connected to a central data processing system where AI and machine learning platforms or human laborers can identify problematic changes. This setup allows supply chain participants to take action sooner in order to remedy potential problems or even pull contaminated goods out of the supply.

They can also help cut down on fraud or falsified records, which is a growing problem in the industry. Imagine an event where an employee says that a package was handled properly via forms or reporting tools, yet it was exposed to damaging elements. The implications of even simple fraud can be significant. Technology that automatically and consistently reports information—over manual entry—can help eliminate this possibility altogether.

Next-Generation Sequencing

NGS refers to a high-throughput DNA sequencing process that is now available to the food industry as a whole. It’s cheaper, more effective and takes a lot less time to complete, which means DNA and RNA sequencing is more accessible to food companies and suppliers now than it ever has been.

NGS can be used to assess and sequence hundreds of different samples at a time at rates of up to 25 million reads per experiment. What that means is that monitoring teams can accurately identify foodborne pathogens and contamination at the speed of the modern market. It is also a highly capable form of food safety measurement and is quickly replacing older, molecular-based methods like PCR.

Ultimately, NGS will lead to vastly improved testing and measurement processes, which can identify potential issues faster and in higher quantities than traditional methods. The food industry will be all the better and safer for it.

The Market Is Ever Evolving

While these technologies are certainly making a splash—and will shape the future of the food safety industry—they do not exist in a vacuum. There are dozens of other technologies and solutions being explored. It is important to understand that many new technologies could rise to the surface even within the next year.

The good news is that it’s all meant to improve the industry, particularly when it comes to the freshness, quality and health of the goods that consumers eat.

Karen Everstine, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

A Different Type of Food Fraud

By Karen Everstine, Ph.D.
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Karen Everstine, Decernis

Food Fraud: Problem Solved? Learn more at the 2019 Food Safety Supply Chain Conference | May 29–30, 2019 | Attend in Rockville, MD or virtually The typical motivation for food fraud is replacing a more expensive ingredient with a less expensive one, thereby increasing profits or competitiveness on the market. Another form of fraud involves the use of active pharmaceutical ingredients in products marketed as dietary supplements or foods containing dietary supplements.

Last month, an instant coffee drink purportedly containing “natural herbs” tongkat ali, guarana, and maca was reported to actually contain two pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) approved by the FDA for the treatment of male erectile dysfunction. In this case, the motivation for fraud is “spiking” with the “intent to impart an effect that cannot be achieved by the dietary ingredients alone.” This is an ongoing challenge for regulators and other stakeholders who work to ensure the safety of the supplements market. This type of fraud in dietary supplements is also an important health risk to consumers, since unintentional consumption of APIs can result in unintended side effects or adverse interactions with other drugs. A quick glance at the FDA’s Medication Health Fraud Page illustrates how common this type of adulteration is, most notably in products advertised for erectile dysfunction, weight loss and sports performance.

In March, an energy drink was banned in Zambia after Ugandan authorities determined it contained sildenafil citrate (the active ingredient in Viagra). In 2015, Chinese authorities investigated distillers of a popular liquor under suspicion of adding the same substance. Adding to the challenge of this type of fraud is the fact that certain consumers may view food and dietary supplement products containing APIs as more appealing, not less.

Both manufacturers and consumers should use good judgment when purchasing dietary supplements or foods marketed as containing dietary supplements. There are educational resources available for consumers and guidance for industry to support the quality assurance and safety of these products. These include the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, the American Botanical Council, the American Herbal Products Association and USP.

Images of the recalled product from FDA’s website. Records involving fraud can be found in the Food Fraud Database.
Mitzi Baum, Stop Foodborne Illness
Food Safety Culture Club

Building a Safer Supply Chain, Increasing Foodborne Illness Awareness, and Progress in Sustainability: A Q&A with Stop’s New CEO

By Maria Fontanazza
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Mitzi Baum, Stop Foodborne Illness

Last week Stop Foodborne Illness announced who would be filling the role of its retiring CEO Deirdre Schlunegger: Mitzi Baum. Previously managing director of food safety at Feeding America, Baum has extensive experience in the non-profit space as well as the realm of retail management. In a Q&A with Food Safety Tech, Baum discusses where she sees Stop Foodborne Illness moving forward in its advocacy role and how the organization will work with both industry as well as consumers in the future.

“I am excited to assume the role of CEO at Stop Foodborne Illness. We are at a point in our evolution to identify new opportunities to expand awareness, create a strategy to pursue those new opportunities and implement and execute our plan,” says Baum. “You will be hearing a lot from Stop in the near future.”

Food Safety Tech: You bring a tremendous amount of experience to your new role at Stop Foodborne Illness. How will the organization work with industry to advocate for food safety moving forward?

Mitzi Baum: In my previous position, I had the opportunity to build relationships, network with food safety peers in food manufacturing and retail and work on food safety issues. I would like to use that experience to our advantage as we identify new ways to work cooperatively with industry to move toward a safer supply chain and expand foodborne illness education and awareness throughout the food system. Stop has also fostered many relationships over the years; now we would like to translate those relationships into partnerships to affect greater impact and reduce the incidence of foodborne illnesses.

FST: Where are the key areas in which Stop will be focusing in its continued effort to both promote awareness of foodborne illness as well as prevention?

Baum: Moving forward, we will build upon relationships to promote awareness of foodborne illness prevention. Currently, we have 10 industry partners working with Stop to identify new training techniques to increase awareness of the impact of foodborne illnesses. In the next few months, we will run pilots to test the techniques, gather data, make adjustments and reassess. After the pilot phase, we will work with an expanding number of companies to implement an appropriate model that will result in measurable improvements for internal foodborne illness awareness.

Mitzi Baum, Stop Foodborne Illness
Mitzi Baum, CEO, Stop Foodborne Illness

FST: Given your experience in food insecurity, where do you see the most progress in addressing sustainability? Where is there work do be done?

Baum: There has been a lot of progress regarding increased awareness of sustainability and reduction of wasted food. Sustainability is an essential part of the food industry and there has been little to no discussion about the topic until the past few years. Thankfully, it has become a badge of honor for companies to include sustainability into their organizational culture. With a pivot to focus on sustainability, topics such as utilization of natural resources, types of packaging materials and long-term environmental impact have become the focus for an industry that can be a model for other industries.

With regard to food waste, the new cooperative initiative between USDA, EPA and FDA can certainly help to accelerate impact. It is my hope that the regulatory agencies can work to modify regulations that prohibit the donation of safe, wholesome foods that end up in landfill rather than on the dinner table. The amount of wasted food in this country is shameful.

FST: As FDA steps into its “New Era of Smarter Food Safety”, will Stop Foodborne Illness be collaborating with the agency on any new/current initiatives?

Baum: Absolutely. We want to participate and represent our constituents in this important work. Stop’s expertise and consumer-focused perspective is essential to have at the table. As the FDA plan rolls out, Stop will be identify the appropriate opportunities to assert its influence and continue to advocate for sound food safety policy.

Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

No Olive Branch for Olive Oil Fraudsters

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Olive oil, food frau
Records involving fraud can be found in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne

Police in Germany caught 24 suspects who made millions of Euros with fake olive oil, and impounded an impressive 150,000 liters of the fraudulent product. In a factory in Southern Italy, mediocre sunflower and soybean oil was altered with coloring and sold as extra virgin olive oil, mainly in Germany. The facility operated under unhygienic conditions. Watch the police video in the article for an original view of the operations.

Resources

Frankfurter Allgemeine (May 14, 2019). “150000 Liter falsches Olivenoel beschlagnahmt”. Retrieved from https://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/kriminalitaet/150-000-liter-gepantschtes-olivenoel-beschlagnahmt-16187012.html?GEPC=s5

Brian Sharp, SafetyChain Software
FST Soapbox

How Industry 4.0 Affects Food Safety and Quality Management

By Brian Sharp
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Brian Sharp, SafetyChain Software

The food and beverage industry is moving towards a fully connected production system with more methods available to automate data collection than ever before. But with all the promises of Industry 4.0, what are the true capabilities of communicating real-time plant floor insights? This article will explain how better capturing methods and analysis can drive data-driven decision making to optimize safety, quality and efficiency in food and beverage operations.

What Is Industry 4.0?

The term Industry 4.0 has many pseudonyms, such as Industrial Internet of Things, Manufacturing 4.0, and Smart Manufacturing, but they generally all refer to the idea that manufacturers will be able to connect all operations in their plants. Where the name Industry 4.0 comes into play is the thought that manufacturing is in its fourth wave of change. In the 1780s, the first industrial revolution started with machines and the “production line” and evolved to mass production in the 1870s; manufacturing entered into a new wave after the 1950s when automation was introduced.

In this current fourth wave of manufacturing, new technology is driving the change in production and the capabilities of what can be accomplished in facilities. A report from Deloitte Insights entitled “The Smart Factory” explains this new way of operations as “ a leap forward from more traditional automation to a fully connected and flexible system—one that can use a constant stream of data from connected operations and production systems to learn and adapt to new demands.”

By way of more sensors, connectivity, analytics, and breakthroughs in robotics and artificial intelligence, the future food and beverage plants will be able to meet customers’ demands for higher-quality products while increasing productivity. However, there is a stark reality that many food and beverage manufacturing facilities are over 50 years old and dealing with legacy equipment. And if an investment in new technology is made, often it is made because food and beverage plants need to reach compliance or fill a customer’s requirement.

“Regulatory compliance is huge,” says Steve Hartley of Matrix Control Systems during a recent SafetyChain webinar. “But if you are able to attach additional business value to that compliance, then incorporating technology into the organization becomes a lot easier.”

For instance, new technology that can help a facility follow regulated processes in food manufacturing can also help to create more consistency and increase the quality of your products. Additionally, if input from the entire organization is collected when investing in more technology and automation, then multiple departments will support the budget costs.

“One of the big things that we see happening with our customers is that they are digging into that production equipment,” says Hartley. “Lots of food manufacturing facilities are filled with all sorts of wonderful processing equipment, but leveraging not only the manufacturing capabilities, but also the data collection capabilities of that equipment is really powerful.”

What Automated Data collection Systems Can Do

Because large food and beverage companies sell a high volume of goods to a large number of customers, many have already automated their data collection. These facilities also receive goods from an intricate supply chain that spans vast distribution networks, thus making automated data collection from receiving all the way through shipping a necessity.

However, many companies are going beyond this and integrating production equipment on the plant floor to provide a deeper level of production and quality data. These types of operations are generally interested in going beyond just being in regulatory compliance, but working on their continuous improvement. What this data can do is to provide better data for better decision making. By knowing what parts of the plant are operating optimally and what areas aren’t, plant managers can to make changes that will unlock more potential from the production line.

Getting the most out of operations is one of the most frequently cited needs of food and beverage manufacturers. The best way to do this is to drive plant efficiencies, which means measuring performance, setting baselines and goals, and holding employees accountable. The key here is to not confine efficiencies to just one area of the facility, but to broaden the scope to include end-to-end processes, from supplier to customer.

“Take a scope that is relevant to everyone and that is relevant to the strategy of the company,” states Daniel Campos of London Consulting Group. A company’s overall strategy should drive the focus of all departments. No one lives in a silo, and every part of your operations affects all the other parts. So any one area that is falling below the goal set takes away value from the system as a whole. This becomes more crucial as the enterprise grows even more connected and dependent on data from each other.

Shortfalls of Industrial Automation Systems

When evaluating the scope of an operation, all areas of the plant should be assessed in terms of how data is being collected. Part of this information assessment is to learn what processes aren’t covered by automated data collection. This includes equipment without sensors that can record accurate measurements and readings.

Another area that should be identified as an entry point for possible faulty or incorrect data is where an operator is required to input information. Some of this might be simply validating that SOPs were followed, such as whether a piece of equipment was cleaned or not and if detergents were actually changed when required.

The quality and fidelity of the data is directly related to the effectiveness of the decisions made. As the saying goes, “Garbage in, garbage out.” But even good data alone doesn’t drive value, but rather information gleaned from the facts collected is where the true benefits can be harnessed to improve the food safety and quality of products produced.

So, if data is analyzed and found not to conform to a desired specification, then the goal is to find out why this is happening. Is the data being collected accurate? If not, why? If it is accurate, then what else is going on?
Additionally, the speed and complexity of today’s food processing plants requires this data to not just be in real time, but able to be captured in smaller increments to make better decisions. This type of data that is collected and analyzed infrequently can slip through the cracks because systems to collect and manage this category can be hard to find, unlike industrial automation systems.

One solution to this problem can be found in capturing data via mobile devices. Tablets and phones moving through the plant with operators can help collect information at the source. Plus, these devices enable managers and executives to see critical control point data as well as summaries of operational performance and out-of-spec occurrences, anytime and anywhere.

As food and beverage manufacturing plants continue to automate their data collection and increasingly connect their production processes, more data will come online in a multitude of ways, allowing for better decision making. Ultimately, this is the promise of Industry 4.0 and why digital transformation promises a higher level of food safety and quality in the future.