Tag Archives: food manufacturing

Petra Sterwerf and Holly Mockus

Going Lean To Support Food Safety

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Petra Sterwerf and Holly Mockus

Lean manufacturing is synonymous with efficiency, but many people mistake it for being only about reductions in workforce, inventory or waste. Lean itself is a growth strategy, and like any strategy, it requires an investment—not a reduction—of time and resources to succeed. To understand how Lean Manufacturing can help food and beverage companies save money and improve efficiencies and food safety, we asked two industry professionals to share their insights.

Petra Sterwerf is an operations executive with experience in lean manufacturing and a background in plant management. She currently serves as director of commissary operations with Skyline Chili in Cincinnati. Holly Mockus is the director of content and industry strategy at Intertek Alchemy where she leads employee training for manufacturing clients around the world.

 How can Lean processes enhance food manufacturing facilities?

Petra: Lean’s meticulous focus on eliminating waste obviously makes it invaluable to the complex, ingredient-focused processes that dominate food manufacturing. However, Lean is ultimately a culture built through collaborative problem solving, which can happen every day throughout the organization.

Collaborative problem solving not only positively impacts the operations group, but it can also be taken across different departments and different processes within a food manufacturing facility. This focus on eliminating waste through problem solving is more important than ever in today’s economic environment where ingredients are more expensive and harder to come by.

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What’s happening in the industry to make Lean more important to companies? 

Petra: In the era of the great resignation, many food companies have lost a lot of institutional knowledge. So, you often have a whole new workforce to ramp up on important processes. Cross-functional, collaborative problem solving allows food manufacturers to bring together experienced people with employees who might be new to the industry. Combined, they can bring all kinds of new ideas to the table.

The process challenges experienced workers to consider new methods and techniques. It also helps less experienced workers understand many of the tried-and-true industry processes that make things operate efficiently.

What is the implementation cost vs. reward for setting up a Lean manufacturing program?

Petra: It’s hard to put a specific number on it, but I’ve seen an investment of $1 million result in over $10 million in returns. Beginning a Lean journey can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. At some companies, a Lean rollout may include large consulting groups and corporate teams. But I’ve been a part of implementations with just a couple of people in a small department.

Holly: Before you see financial ROI, you’ll see improvements in KPIs like safety recordable rates, environmental positive rates or first-pass quality rates. Production-wise, it could be your line efficiencies, your product yields or order fill rates. In terms of food quality and safety, you’re going to see fewer holds, customer complaints and near-miss incidents because your processes are more consistent.

Some people hear the word “Lean” and immediately expect workforce reductions. Can you implement Lean without having layoffs? 

Petra: I’ve been involved in projects for sizable facilities with over 600 people, and we did not lose one person in the name of a Lean manufacturing change. As part of the process, you will identify value-added tasks that you need and the resources to make them happen. And then you reallocate people accordingly. Also, manufacturing facilities often experience turnover, which adjusts the workforce level down to where it needs to be.

Holly: Lean cost savings can also be invested back into your employees through training, internal celebrations, facility improvements or other programs that can provide substantial worker and business benefits.

Where can you see the fastest results or ROI?

Petra: The quickest results tend to materialize in yields and formulations. In the protein business, for example, where meat has become more expensive, you have to decide where problem-solving Kaizen events are necessary, or where you want to implement standardized work. The meat cost or meat waste is always a good place to start.

Holly: I’ve seen many formula audits that reveal significant inconsistencies in processes such as things being weighed differently, or recipes and formulas that aren’t followed. These mistakes can produce inconsistent products and also result in regulatory issues that could affect public health. Streamlining these processes through Lean practices can deliver results in a short period of time.

What are some of the best ways to integrate HR and senior leadership into the Lean process? 

Petra: It is important to get HR involved from the very beginning by explaining what you’re trying to do with collaborative problem solving and putting Lean tools into place. As you start planning problem-solving events, keep HR in the loop on scheduling, processes and reporting. This is typically done every time you do a continuous improvement workshop. You’ll pull in senior leadership and HR to report what you learned from the event.

Holly: Sometimes it can help to include HR representatives in your Lean teams to represent the people factor. That way, if employees are concerned about any new process, HR can talk to it and provide the reassurances that are needed.

How do you educate and get the employees to embrace Lean? 

Petra: You have to be careful when you start a Lean initiative not to oversell it in the beginning. If you stop everything in the plant for an all-hands meeting to describe the project, you can cause some employee anxiety. And then people are expecting big changes to happen quickly. Lean can be a slow evolution, especially if you start with constrained resources. I recommend starting with a small group of people and talk to them, while letting all employees know that you’re starting small on this new project.

Holly: I would say you have to empower people and engage them by providing knowledge. They need to understand what Lean is, the benefits, their role and how they can contribute. It’s all about making sure everyone fully participates regardless of their level. And employees need to feel like they are being listened to and that their ideas have a chance of moving forward in the process.

How is creating a “culture of failure” essential to the ultimate success of a Lean program?

Petra: It’s basically the scientific method of thinking. You have to try different approaches, knowing that things don’t always work. Sometimes you have to take a few steps back, learn from mistakes, and move on. The worst mindset you can have is a fear of failure. That being said, you also don’t want to just try a whole lot of poorly thought out ideas and waste a lot of product or money.

How do you measure success from your initial steps, and how do you continue using Lean?

Petra: I would recommend that people implementing Lean programs document their journeys. At the beginning of the project, go around and take pictures of the current state of the business. When you start making changes, you often forget what it looked like before. And then you realize that despite making significant changes, you have no documentation to show that journey. Continuous improvement reports are a great way to capture pictures and create a folder of all the changes that you make.

 

Emily Newton, Revolutionized Magazine
FST Soapbox

How Can Preventive Maintenance Save Food Processors Money?

By Emily Newton
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Emily Newton, Revolutionized Magazine

The right preventive maintenance approach can improve food safety while saving money. With the right plan, food processing professionals can prevent serious machine failure, decrease maintenance costs and get a better sense of which machines may be more trouble than they’re worth.

However, not every preventive maintenance plan is guaranteed to help processors cut costs. Investing in the right strategy and tools will be necessary for a business that wants to save money with effective maintenance.

How an Effective Preventive Maintenance Approach Can Save Money

To start, the food safety benefits of a preventive maintenance program can help food processors avoid significant troubles down the line. Contamination and recalls will cost time and money.

They can also damage the professional relationships that businesses have with buyers. Recalls are extraordinarily expensive for food and beverage companies, costing an average of $10 million per recall, according to one joint study from the Food Marketing Institute and the Consumer Brands Association (formerly the Grocery Manufacturers Association).

Preventive maintenance can also extend machines’ life spans, giving a company more time before they’ll need to completely replace or rebuild a piece of equipment. Over time, this will help a business prevent machine failure or injuries resulting from improper machine behavior or function. In some cases, it can also mean cheaper repairs and less downtime.

Improving Records With the Right Plan

An effective preventive maintenance plan also generates a significant and detailed archive of maintenance records.

If a plan is implemented correctly, technicians will create a record every time they inspect, repair or otherwise maintain a particular machine. These records will be an invaluable asset in the event of an in-house or third-party audit, as they can help prove that machines have been properly lubricated, calibrated and otherwise maintained.

If a food processing business needs to resell a particular piece of equipment, they’ll also have a full service record that can help them establish the machine’s value.

Over time, the records will also give a highly accurate sense of how expensive the machines really are across an entire business. If the staff records repairs performed, tools used and resources and time spent, professionals can quickly tabulate each machine’s cost concerning man-hours or resources needed. These logs can help single out machinery that may be more trouble than it’s worth and plan future buying decisions.

With a digital system, like a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), managers can automate most of the administrative work that goes into a preventive maintenance plan.

Modern CMMS tech also provides a few additional benefits beyond streamlining recordkeeping. For example, if a business is up against a major maintenance backlog or trying to balance limited resources against necessary repairs and checkups, a CMMS can help optimize their use of resources. As a result, they can make the most of the time, money and tools they have.

Common Preventive Maintenance Pitfalls

Typically, an effective preventive maintenance plan starts with a catalog of facility equipment. This catalog includes basic information on every piece of equipment in the facility — such as location, name, serial number and vendor, as well as information on how frequently the machine should be inspected or maintained.

Keeping spotty or incomplete records can make a preventative maintenance plan both less effective and more expensive. For example, a partial service record may give an improper idea of how well-maintained certain equipment is. Missing machine information may also confuse service technicians, making it harder for them to properly inspect or maintain a machine.

Too-frequent maintenance checks can also become a problem over time. Every time a maintenance technician opens up a machine, they can potentially expose sensitive electronics to dust, humidity or facility contaminants, or risk damage to machine components.

A maintenance check also means some downtime, as it’s usually not safe or practical to inspect a running machine.

Using the wrong maintenance methods can also sometimes decrease a machine’s life span. For example, certain cleaning agents can damage door gaskets over time. This can eventually cause equipment like a freeze dryer to be unable to create a proper seal.

The equipment manufacturer and technicians can usually help a company know what kind of maintenance will work best and how often they should inspect or tune up a machine.

Going Beyond Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance is the standard approach in most industries, but it’s no longer the cutting-edge of maintenance practices. New developments in the tech world, like new Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) sensors and real-time artificial intelligence (AI) analysis, have enabled a new form of maintenance called predictive maintenance.

With predictive maintenance, a food processing plant can outfit their machines with an array of special sensors. These sensors track information like vibration, lubrication levels, temperature and even noise. A digital maintenance system will record that information, establishing baselines and data about normal operating levels.

Once the baseline is established, the predictive technology can use fluctuations or extreme variables to predict improper operation or machine failure. If some machine variable exceeds safe operating thresholds, the predictive maintenance system can alert facility supervisors — or, depending on what kind of control the system has, shut down a machine altogether.

The predictive approach can catch issues that may arise in-between checks in a preventive schedule. This can help reduce the frequency of maintenance checks — possibly preventing further machine damage and saving the business money on technician labor.

The data a predictive maintenance system collects can also help optimize equipment for maximum efficiency.

Implementing a predictive maintenance plan will require a bit of a tech investment, however.

Food Processors Can Save Money With the Right Maintenance Approach

Preventive maintenance isn’t just essential for food safety — done well, it can also be a major cost-saving measure for food processors.

Good recordkeeping, a regular maintenance schedule and new technology can all help a business decrease maintenance and equipment costs. For processors that want to invest more in their maintenance plans, a predictive approach can provide even better results.

Adam Serfas, R.S. Quality
FST Soapbox

Tips for Creating an Inclusive Color-Coding Plan for Food Manufacturing Facilities

By Adam Serfas
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Adam Serfas, R.S. Quality

Color-coding as a quality assurance and safety measure has been on the rise since the passage of FSMA in 2011. Now, 10 years later, color-coding is being used in a wide range of industries from food manufacturers and processors to pharmaceutical developers and even brewers. As the popularity of the practice of color-coding has increased, so too has the market for color-coded tools. Nowadays, those in the industry can find virtually every high-quality cleaning tool under the sun, and a hygienic tools storage option for that tool in the color needed. The improved quality and availability of these products is wonderful, but nice tools alone cannot ensure a successful color-coding plan. Color-coding compliance is only possible when there is team-wide buy-in. That means meeting the team where they are—making the plan important to every single employee who steps onto a production floor. To do that, it needs to be introduced in an inclusive manner. The following are some tips for creating and implementing an inclusive color-coding plan.

Draw Up the Plan With Folks Beyond Management

Before you ever lock in a color-coding plan—whether you plan to color-code by zone, by allergen or by shifts—you first need to consult a wide range of team members. One common mistake is developing a color-coding plan with only quality assurance experts and those in management. This presents a problem for a couple of reasons.

One, you’re missing out on the perspective of those who will most often be asked to execute the plan. Say you choose the color purple as one of the colors in your color-coding plan, and you purchase all of the tools you think you will need in that color. You roll out the plan only to find out there’s an essential tool you need, and it doesn’t come in that color. You now have a problem on your hands, and a costly one at that, as you’re going to need to start over with a new color and new tools.

Beyond needing that on-the-ground perspective, you miss out on a key opportunity to gain buy-in early on from those who will be directly involved in carrying out the plan. Do yourself a favor and invite shift leaders to the table. Explain to them what you would like to do with a color-coding plan and listen to any advice they might have on executing a plan everyone is going to want to see succeed. Generally speaking, it pays to go with a big-tent approach to planning, so spend some time thinking about which parties should be represented in the planning process to capture all of the varying viewpoints of those at your facility.

Ensure the Plan Is Color-Blind Friendly

As selecting colors is one of the most important things you do in drafting a color-coding plan,pay special attention to the colors themselves. Color-blindness affects 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women—certainly not a negligible amount, and something you want to take into consideration.

Once you figure out all of the tools you need, determine which colors can accommodate those needs. From that list, try to avoid the most commonly confused color pairings in your plan. Red and green, green and brown, green and blue, blue and gray, blue and purple, green and grey, and green and black are the most commonly confused. If possible, avoid using those color combinations. Instead, opt for high-contrast options such as orange and purple, purple and yellow, or blue and yellow to name a few.

Some people will also look to shades to help achieve a higher contrast. For example, lime green and a maroon red is much better for a color-blind person than your standard royal red and shamrock green. These days more tools are available in varied shades but, again, you need to ensure that you’re able to get every tool you need now—and in the foreseeable future—in the color you pick.

Should you need to use colors that are not high-contrast, do your best to keep those tools separate. If you are color-coding by zone, use the most commonly confused color combinations on the opposite ends of the facility, where they are less likely to swap places. You can also help by using tool storage boards such as shadow boards or wall racks that are color-coded to match the tools. That way, tools always go back to the same place after each use.

Employ Multilingual Trainings and Signage

Generally speaking, the food industry is particularly diverse, and many facilities employ staff whose first language is not English. Work with your HR team and managers to identify which languages are primarily spoken among your staff and ensure you can offer trainings on the color-coding plan in all of those languages. Frequently, facilities have employees who are multilingual and can therefore translate during a training session. If not, it may be wise to hire a translator. This presents a nominal fee, whereas an employee failing to follow a color-coding plan could have disastrous consequences.

It is also important to ensure that any signage you have explaining the color-coding plan is available in the primary languages of the employees.

Make Use of Different Teaching Methods

Just as in the classroom, employees come to work with different learning styles. It’s up to the employer to meet those different needs with varying teaching styles and materials that speak to the importance of the color-coding plan. For the auditory learners, an all-hands meeting where a leader explains the importance of color-coding is going to be great. For the visual learners, handouts and permanent signage throughout your facility will be appreciated.

Meanwhile, tactile learners might want to run through a practice of grabbing tools, seeing where they will be used and returning them to their designated storage spot to see the plan in action. While asking employees to go through these different teachings might draw some eye-rolls for those who feel they grasped the concept the first time, the exercise might help make the color-coding plan click for someone who struggled to understand what they were being asked to do. Additionally, repetition helps all learners, so revisit these trainings to refresh veteran staff and bring newer folks up to speed.

Invite Feedback

Finally, invite employees to share feedback with you along the way. An inclusive culture is one that allows everyone to have a voice. Make it clear that team members are welcome to share any feedback they have on the color-coding plan, the trainings and tools along the way. Once again, in the interest of accommodating everyone, it’s a good idea to offer multiple avenues for feedback reporting. You might like to invite employees to share feedback directly with managers and also offer an anonymous suggestion box that gets checked regularly. Every facility and every staff has unique needs, so listening to the suggestions that come your way can help shed light on important considerations.

Food Safety Consortium

2020 FSC Episode 8 Preview: Listeria Detection, Mitigation and Control

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Food Safety Consortium

This week’s episode of the 2020 Food Safety Consortium Virtual Conference Series focuses on that pesky bug lurking in many food manufacturing and processing facilities: Listeria. The following are highlights for Thursday’s session:

  • Listeria monocytogenes: Advancing Food Safety in the Frozen Food Industry, with Sanjay Gummalla, American Frozen Foods Institute
  • Shifting the Approach to Sanitation Treatments in the Food & Beverage Industry: Microbial Biofilm Monitoring, with Manuel Anselmo, ALVIM Biofilm
  • A Look at Listeria Detection and Elimination, with Angela Anandappa, Ph.D., Alliance for Advanced Sanitation
  • TechTalk on The Importance of Targeting Listeria Where It Lives, presented by Sterilex

The event begins at 12 pm ET on Thursday, October 29. Haven’t registered? Follow this link to the 2020 Food Safety Consortium Virtual Conference Series, which provides access to 14 episodes of critical industry insights from leading subject matter experts! We look forward to your joining us virtually.

Melody Ge
Women in Food Safety

Keep the Door Open to All Experiences

By Melody Ge
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Melody Ge

I recently sat down with Peter Begg, vice president of quality and food safety at Glanbia Nutritionals where he shared his personal experiences and advice for how to build a career path and grow into a leader. There are a lot of opportunities, and it’s important to remember that a food safety career is not short term—you are in it for the long haul—so don’t be in a hurry, find your own balance, and enjoy life! Have fun! Life is too short to work 24/7.

Differing from many food safety professionals, Peter started his career within the food industry as a chemical engineer at Kraft after graduating from Penn State University; now 26 years in the industry, Peter leads a global food safety and quality team at Glanbia Nutritionals. He had a couple of major pivots in his career that led him to where he is today. At the beginning of his career, he joined the R&D department at Kraft Foods, and made the decision to move to Switzerland to take on the company’s European quality team. After three years abroad, he returned to the United States, where he participated in the split of Kraft into Kraft Foods and Mondelez International. Today, in addition to his current role at Glanbia, he also leads the company’s COVID response team. When taking a look back, he affirmed that he made all the right decisions and was glad he didn’t say no to any opportunities that arose.

During the interview, Peter advised young female professionals to be patient and to avoid being in a hurry. Also, find a career path you are passionate about: “When you are passionate, a lot of the challenges or difficulties will pass,” he said. “However, don’t be opposed to trying different roles, especially early in your career. Be open to those other experiences, because they will help you later on.” Additionally, don’t assume that the first experience is going to be the only career path that you will have. Even if you move from R&D to marketing or procurement, that experience will help you. It offers a different way of looking at things. “Nothing you do will be wasted.” I can’t agree more on this point.

Peter Begg
Peter Begg will participate in a panel discussion about Professional Development & Women in Food Safety during the November 5 episode of the 2020 Food Safety Consortium Virtual Conference Series

When we talked about food science career options for students, Peter had a unique point of explaining the two common options: R&D and Food Safety and Quality. Peter distinguished them by the sense of urgency and challenges of those roles. A project within R&D is normally six months to a year, with timelines to complete the project; whereas within safety and quality, a project could be one day or one week, and is often hard to predict, as every day brings something new. “If you are a person who loves challenges and changes then you might find more achievements in food safety and quality,” he said. “I enjoy the diversity of challenges every day, and this is the reason I didn’t go back to R&D.”

One thing that resonated with me long after the conversation was a tip that Peter would have given to his younger self: “Don’t sweat the small stuff. As you gain more experience, you learn to focus on the things that make the real difference. I know that sounds trite, but you have to get better at triaging and understanding what is important,” he explained.

At the end, Peter pointed out that we still need more diversity in the C-suite and at the SVP level. He learned a lot from his first boss who was a successful female leader. Female leaders are more empathetic and tend to lead without feeling the need to fill airtime. “I have known so many women leaders. They are comfortable in who they are as a leader, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for that,” Peter said.

At the same time, Peter continues to encourage female leaders to be more self-confident. He told us, “Don’t doubt yourself! If you keep getting told ‘no’, it affects your self-confidence, however, it has to be overcome; it takes all of us to remember that we all bring different things to the table.”

Peter shared a couple of personal stories that he found impactful as well. As a leader, Peter cannot emphasize enough about the beauty of diverse thoughts on a team. He learned one can never know everything. As a leader, it’s our responsibility to lead and encourage team members to speak up and grow together; also, always remain calm and solve problems based on facts.

Peter concluded our conversation by emphasizing that we all need to find our own balance to enjoy life. The work/life balance: We work to live, not the other way around. There will be ups and downs. There will be long days, but we can find other days to balance them, and it is important to have an outlet. Life is too short; it needs to be fun—not just work 24/7!

“The real leaders were the ones who spoke to the facts and remained calm and focused on what we needed to do to solve the issues.” – Peter Begg, Glanbia Nutritionals

Melody Ge: What have you learned by working with and mentoring female leaders?

Begg: From a leadership standpoint, my first boss at Kraft was a female and we still keep in touch. She was a great teacher and mentor. There’s an empathy that female leaders have that not all male leaders have. Also, when I made the move to Mondelez and I worked for the head of research & development and quality who is another phenomenal female leader, she had a style about her that kept everyone at ease. She would ask very poignant questions, but she didn’t overuse airtime. I’ve seen men hog all the airtime, because they want everyone to know they are the smartest one in the room. I haven’t seen that with some of the female leaders; they are comfortable in who they are as a leader, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for that.

Right now, I have six directors and four of them are female. To be fair, I think in our function of Quality and Food Safety you do see at least 50% [balance]. For me, it’s the diversity of thought brought to the team. There are different ways of looking at things from men versus women. I think that ability to communicate and be empathetic is something I see out of female leaders. I’ve learned 26 years in that I don’t know everything. Having that diversity of thought and background is absolutely critical to having a strong leadership team and also to make decisions that are well thought through.

To be honest, I think what we are lacking is the diversity at the VP and SVP level and above where it is still pretty male dominated, and that needs to change. I see a lot of strong up-and-coming females; there’s talent out there that I hope continues to grow in the future.

Ge: Why do you think there is a lack of females at the VP and SVP level? Is there any insight you can share?

Begg: One of the reasons is because that, with many leaders, they want people who they can trust. A lot of people look to those who act like themselves. It takes a lot of good thought to take yourself out of that and really look at who is the best leader for your team. I think part of the reason is that many of the CEOs and SVPs are male. We still need more diversity in the C-suite.

Ge: Can you share an unforgettable story that had an impact on you?

Begg: There are two that come to mind.

  1. I was a very new leader within R&D at the time and leading a cross functional team. One of my team members came up with what I thought was a pretty good idea. I shared it at a meeting, and everyone liked it. But what I failed to do was not recognize the team member whose idea that it was. The team member was really upset and felt like I presented it as my idea. That, of course, wasn’t my intent, but I learned that my job as a leader is to set my team up for success and not get in the way. You also have to give proper credit and acknowledgement. That is something to this day that I keep in the back of my mind—to make sure that I always recognize my team publicly, especially when they are the ones driving the effort. I am not on the frontlines, my team is. I have to make sure that I remember that you need to take the time to acknowledge people.
  2. When I was in Europe in the quality and food safety role, we had a situation where we were very close to a 27-country recall. It’s something I will never forget because of the intensity of the conversations that were had all the way up to the CEO of Kraft at the time. It ended up that we were able to narrow it and my team did a phenomenal job on tracing the recall down to two countries. What I remember most in that setting, where you’re with all these senior executives, is that the real leaders were the ones who spoke to the facts and remained calm and focused on what we needed to do. The people who I didn’t want to be like were the ones who were emotional and flying off the handle about things that had nothing to do with what we were trying to resolve in the situation. As a leader, you have to project a presence and a sense of calm in a food safety crisis. If you’re in a food safety and quality role, something will happen along the way that is challenging. That is just the nature of what we deal with.

Ge: What would you hope to see in next three to five years for women in the industry?

Begg: Definitely more female outstanding professionals. At Glanbia, we hire 15–20 grads in the U.S. every year through campus recruiting, and it’s at least 50% female. The talent pool is there—but how are we nurturing them, and giving them the support and career guidance? Everyone across the industry needs to have these conversations and talk about the key experiences, key skills and capabilities that they should be building throughout their career. There are certain things that are translatable regardless of the type of job that you have, such as communication skills. Secondly, helping women build the confidence that they can be successful and that there will be opportunities. As a leader, I am part of creating those opportunities and will continue doing so.

Food Safety Consortium

2020 FSC Episode 6 Preview: Sanitation Issues

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Food Safety Consortium

The integration of sanitation is a critical part of the food manufacturing process. This week’s episode of the 2020 Food Safety Consortium Virtual Conference Series will focus on effective approaches, best practices and lessons learned. The following are some highlights:

  • Sanitation Methods, Day-to-Day Operations and Applying It to a Pandemic (Now and Future Outbreaks), with Elise Forward, Forward Food Solutions; David Shelep, Paramount Sciences; and Bill Leverich, Microbiologics, Inc.
  • The Critical Nature of a Good Environmental Program: The Story Behind Sabra’s Recall, Experience with the FDA, and Environmental Monitoring Journey, with Rob Mommsen, Sabra Dipping Company
  • Surrogates & Emerging Applications: Their Role in Validation, Verification and Compliance, with Laure Pujol, Ph.D. and Vidya Ananth, Novolyze
  • Tech Talks from Sterilex and Romer Labs

The event begins at 12 pm ET. Haven’t registered? Follow this link to the 2020 Food Safety Consortium Virtual Conference Series, which provides access to 14 episodes of critical industry insights from leading subject matter experts! We look forward to your joining us virtually.

Jill Henry, Essity
FST Soapbox

The New Hygiene Standard: Building Trust Through Employee Safety

By Jill Henry
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Jill Henry, Essity

The pandemic has heightened the need for a new hygiene standard at food manufacturing sites. On August 19, OSHA and FDA released a health and hygiene checklist for food manufacturers to increase employee safety and help mitigate the spread of COVID-19 at sites. This checklist reinforces the importance of elevating hygiene standards, but it can be difficult to know where to start—especially for food manufacturers aiming to maintain productivity while maximizing hygiene compliance and safety.

For food manufacturers seeking to navigate OSHA and FDA’s new guide, it’s important to remember that no matter the environment, the basics of hygiene remain true. You can kick-start your updated hygiene plan by implementing simple hygiene best practices and establishing comprehensive and clear protocols to achieve compliance on the road ahead. Remember, employee health and productivity begins with a safety-first mindset. Start by establishing a strong foundation with these tips that will help you maintain your food manufacturing site’s hygiene checklist amid COVID-19 and beyond.

Achieve Hand Hygiene Compliance

Hands are the most exposed part of the body to pathogens. Therefore, hand hygiene is considered one of the most important and effective measures to avoid the transmission of harmful pathogens, viruses and diseases. Given this, consistent and proper handwashing is a fundamental aspect of any hygiene plan, especially in food manufacturing sites where employees frequently touch common surfaces (e.g., door handles, technical equipment, etc.) . People often (and unknowingly) touch their eyes, nose and mouth after touching contaminated surfaces, which contributes to potential transmission.

Hand hygiene is proven to be a primary line of defense in stopping the spread of COVID-19 and other pathogens, but only when conducted properly. To maintain hand hygiene compliance, the CDC advises that employees thoroughly wash their hands with soap and water, under warm or cold water for at least 20 seconds, before properly drying their hands with a paper towel. All too often, people forget the importance of hand drying in the handwashing process, but it’s very significant as hand drying can help remove any remaining germs from the skin. In addition, germs can be transferred more easily to and from wet hands, which makes hand drying critical after a thorough handwashing.

Utilize Signage as Visual Cues

While many are familiar with the importance of hand hygiene, it can be difficult to put into practice when employees are busy on the job and forging ahead on production lines. Keep hand hygiene top of mind by utilizing visual cues, such as signage, to remind employees about when, where and how to wash their hands properly. Signage serves as visual reminders to achieve proper hand hygiene compliance and is an important part of establishing a site’s hygiene standard and foundation.

Opt for signage that includes a direct call to action for employees. Using the word “you” can also increase efficacy by calling directly upon the person reading the sign to participate in hand hygiene compliance. Additionally, signage should be updated frequently to keep employees engaged and hand hygiene top of mind. New and fresh reminders on the importance of handwashing will help keep employees attentive, but if you don’t have the time or resources to continually update on-site signage, leverage free tools available online to help you get started.

Establish Surface Cleaning Protocols without Sacrificing Productivity

COVID-19 can spread from surface-to-person contact. This can happen when an employee carrying the virus touches technical equipment on a production line that is not properly wiped down before the next employee’s shift. With this in mind, it’s critical to establish effective surface cleaning protocols that mitigate instances of cross-contamination and don’t create downtime in production or processing.

To create an efficient surface hygiene plan, assess high-touch areas, and develop a list based on where you observe high-touch surfaces to ensure these areas are properly sanitized ahead of shift changes. Provide employees with the surface cleaning checklist that enables them to effectively sanitize surfaces prior to departing their shift. The checklist should include key areas that must be disinfected, as well as tips to properly disinfect surfaces.

When disinfecting surfaces, use an approved disinfectant and a disposable cloth, which ensures the surface is being wiped down with a non-contaminated wiper each time. If using an alcohol-based product, use one with a minimum of 70% alcohol (i.e., Ethanol or Isopropyl alcohol), and always follow the manufacturer’s application guidelines.

Optimize Sanitization Stations and Dispenser Placement
Think strategically and practically about dispenser placement in food manufacturing sites because where sanitizer dispensers are placed makes a difference in whether they are used by employees. Similar to establishing surface cleaning protocols, start by observing where high-traffic areas are on site, and consider critical entry and exit points that would benefit from a dispenser. Dispensers should also be placed in clear view, so they are easily accessible for employees. Consider pairing signage with dispensers as a helpful reminder to utilize these stations and provide instruction on best practices to sanitize effectively.

Optimizing dispenser placement doesn’t stop with implementation. Once dispensers are in place, continue to monitor where dispensers are most frequently used, and assess other areas prime for dispensers. Remember: Employee hygiene and safety is a priority, and optimally placing dispensers and hygiene solutions where they are needed to encourage use is key to creating a safer environment. Place dispensers in areas such as common spaces, near production lines, in locker rooms, and at entrances and exits in order to encourage regular surface cleaning and hand washing. Flexible mounting solutions and portable solutions can facilitate access in harsher environments. The availability of hygiene products encourages their use, so be sure to keep dispensers fully stocked.

Promote Awareness among Employees and Instill Confidence

It’s more important than ever to build employee trust and confidence. As the saying goes, knowledge is power. Communicate frequently with employees and distribute guidelines around COVID-19 so that they understand the measures being introduced and how you will continually monitor your environment. Consider implementing COVID-19-specific training and education sessions that empower employees to ask questions about hygiene and safety measures on site, and provide essential instruction on COVID-19 and what to do if a case is confirmed among employees. These sessions can also be used to provide further education and emphasis on how individuals can maintain hygiene compliance for the greater good of the manufacturing site and their colleagues.

In the current environment, it’s clear that food manufacturers must secure a new hygiene standard to maintain employee health and safety and continue to deliver essential products. But with ongoing shifts, changes and uncertainty, it can be challenging to juggle operations and hygiene compliance—while instilling trust and confidence among employees. Whether a site is continuing, resuming or re-evaluating operations amid the current pandemic, it is critical to maintain a strong foundation for hygiene, so that employees are safe and essential production moves ahead.

Megan Nichols
FST Soapbox

Four Influential Technologies Changing Food Manufacturing

By Megan Ray Nichols
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Megan Nichols

Some impressive technologies are not only impacting the food industry right now but will also have a huge impact in the future. As their use grows to be more prevalent, the industry will change to be smarter and more efficient, with continued improvements across the board.

1. AI and Advanced Robotics

While artificial intelligence and advanced robotics are two distinct technologies, they are frequently paired together. AI, and the data it digests, is used to command robots, allowing them to be more precise, more intelligent and more aware.

Most robots on their own are capable of completing only repetitive and clearly defined tasks. Throw something unique into the mix and they’ll either fumble or fail. However, when governed by data-based intelligence solutions like AI or machine learning, those robots become something incredibly advanced.

In the food industry, machinery and robots are leveraged to improve operations, further maintaining quality and efficiency, at affordable costs. They often work alongside human laborers to augment or enhance processes. They come with several unexpected benefits as well, such as much-improved safety for workers, faster and higher product output and consistent, reliable quality.

For example, JBS, one of the world’s largest meatpacking firms, deployed robotic butchers within its plants. The robots were used to slice more challenging meats, which reduced workplace injuries.

2. Automation

Automation stands alongside AI and advanced robotics, even incorporating those technologies to create a streamlined system. As of 2017, 73% of surveyed companies in the food and beverage manufacturing industry either had or were in the process of establishing automation within their facilities.

Many systems are designed to replace or enhance repetitive tasks, boosting their speed and accuracy, to significantly improve output, without incurring a loss in quality. It’s not just about hardware, like swapping a human laborer for a robot. It’s also achieved through software. Think supply chain management solutions that help plan for various events and experiences without human input.

When many of these technologies are used side-by-side, it strengthens their application and usability. As is true of advanced robotics, for example, AI can also be used to create more intelligent automation platforms. Instead of carrying out rote or simple tasks, they can be programmed to react and engage through any number of parameters. The system might slow production, for instance, based on a decrease in product demand. Or, it might swap to an alternate component or ingredient because of a shortage somewhere.

With the right controls and support, automation technologies are game-changing. With the global population growing and demands increasing more with each year, food manufacturers will look to streamline their operations and boost output in any way possible, and automation will be a go-to.

3. Digital Twins

Digital twins in food manufacturing are essentially simulated copies or a virtual representation of a physical system. That definition might seem confusing, but think of it as a clone that can be manipulated for testing and analytics.In other words, it is a twin of the actual system and information, in every sense of the word, albeit one that is more versatile and less vulnerable. It allows manufacturers and distributors to run simulations by feeding specific information into the system to identify patterns, recognize outcomes and much more.

As the systems and controls supporting the field become smarter and more digitized, digital twins in food manufacturing will find their way into product development, testing, post-production, distribution and nearly every other facet of the industry. It will become an integral component to not only understand what’s happening in the market but also for keeping up with the ebb and flow of supply and demand.

4. Blockchain

Even well before the pandemic, people had become much more conscious about the foods they consume. They want to know the origin of their goods and whether they’ve been sourced using safe, healthy and environmentally friendly methods. The problem with such demands is that, until recently, there haven’t been many solutions for increased visibility within the food supply chain.

Growing concerns for health are now a priority, and visibility is an absolute must. Blockchain technology is the answer, providing precisely the kind of visibility, efficiency, controls and collaboration that consumers want.

With this food manufacturing technology in place, someone could trace a head of lettuce back to its initial seeding. They can see who grew the plants and where, and which methods they used to mature the crop. Then, they can follow its journey to the store shelf.

How is such a thing possible? It all has to do with the technology. In its simplest form, Blockchain is a digital ledger or complete and digitized record of a particular data set. The data that goes in is added to something called a block, and as more is added, it is tacked on to the end of that block to create a long, linked record. Every bit of information is visible across the entire chain, hence the name blockchain.

Walmart is using the technology to track potential food contamination outbreaks. It empowers them to not just find the source but also find the many branches involved — like where goods might have been shipped and who may have purchased them.

Food Manufacturing Technology for the Future

While each food manufacturing technology discussed here is incredibly influential and will have a direct impact on the future of the industry, they are not the only solutions making waves. Some additional examples include:

  • Drones and automated delivery vehicles
  • 3-D printing for edible goods
  • Smart or precision agriculture
  • High-tech packaging
  • Smarter waste disposal and recycling

The takeaway is that technology is vastly improving the operational efficiency of the food supply chain, from farmers and manufacturers to the retail stores featuring goods on their shelves. There’s no right or wrong buy-in, as any one of these technologies can be used to streamline separate processes. The biggest challenge will be deciding what to upgrade first, especially when it comes to delivering high-quality, fresh goods in a prompt manner.

Checklist

2020 FSC Episode 1 Wrap: Food Defense & Food Safety Culture Go Hand-in-Hand

By Maria Fontanazza
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Checklist

Yesterday marked the beginning of the 2020 Food Safety Consortium Virtual Conference Series. Episode 1 featured Food Defense Foundational Planning Elements: Strategies, Insights and Best Practices. Led by Jason Bashura, senior manager, global defense at PepsiCo, food defense experts from manufacturing, retail and the government shared different perspectives on the FSMA Intentional Adulteration rule; how to develop a food defense plan; the key role that food safety culture plays in food defense; education and training; and establishing awareness of and combating various threats to the food supply, including the insider threat.

Especially eye-opening was the information presented by Robert Norton, Ph.D. of Auburn University about the threats against the food supply (a “target-rich environment”) and the range of adversaries and their motivation for disrupting the food supply.

Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Prosecution Puts an End to Cash Cow

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Sulfites, food fraud
Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database.
Image credit: Susanne Kuehne

Sulfites and sulfur dioxide can make meats look fresher than they truly are, and therefore are banned by the FDA The Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code also prohibits the addition of sulfites to raw meat. Not only is there a risk of meat past its prime getting into the food supply, sulfites may also pose a danger to allergy and asthma sufferers. More than 23 tons of ground beef were freshened up illegally with sulfites and sold in New Zealand to consumers. The manufacturer was recently sentenced to a fine in this two-year old case.

Resource

  1. News Desk. (July 27, 2020). “NZ company fined for adding sulfites to ground beef”. Food Safety News.

The 2020 Food Safety Consortium Virtual Series features an episode on Food Integrity & Food Fraud. The episode takes place on Thursday, October 22. Learn more about 2020 FSC now!