How to set smarter food safety objectives?

Working towards smarter food safety objectives:

This article discusses the establishment of measurable targets to help management teams to focus their resources within the required areas and timeframes. Also, it is a platform for continuous improvement initiatives either at the plant-level or process-specific levels.

This article addresses three fundamental questions:

• How and why does management establish measurable quality and food safety objectives?
• How does management establish continuous improvement initiatives that are directly linked to measurable objectives? And
• How and why management should establish proactive food safety objectives?

Comments are based on observations that I have collected and discussed with management teams over the years, regardless of the size and complexity of the company operations. For some, especially larger companies, with adequate knowledge, management understands the relevancy of established measurable objectives.

Unfortunately, too many companies still struggle because of several factors, such as lack of knowledge and understanding, not fully grasping the benefits and added value, lack of discipline and structured approach.

Definitions:

Here are some definitions according to ISO 9000:2015. A large percentage of managers and process owners do not fully understand the differences between objectives, goals and action items and tend to mix them up. For example, some companies think they have established objectives or goals, which are, in fact, action items that could support objectives and goals.

1. Improvement – activity to enhance performance

Continual improvement – recurring activity to enhance performance

Note 1: the process of setting objectives and finding opportunities for improvement is a continual process through use of audit findings and audit conclusions, analysis of data, management reviews or other means that would lead to corrective actions or preventive actions.

1. Process – set of interrelated or interacting activities that use inputs to deliver an intended result.
2. Objective – results to be achieved.

Note 1: objectives can relate to different disciplines, such as strategic, organisation wide, project, product and process.

1. Sustained success – success over a period of time.

Note 1: sustained success emphasizes the need for a balance between economic – financial interests of an organization and those of the social and ecological environment.

Note 2: sustained success relates to the interested parties of an organisation, such as customers, owners, people in an organization, providers, bankers, unions, partners or society.

1. Performance – measurable results.

Arguments:

An observation and/or finding against requirements of quality and food safety objectives.

There are three primary reasons:

1. Objectives are not measurable, with established targets and/or indicators – established objectives by facility management are in fact action items that could support facility objectives. In addition, management may be spending a lot of time and resources because they are not focused on specific food safety and quality targets or goals. In contrast, there are many indicators or targets for sales, production efficiencies, maintenance downtime, product defects.
2. Objectives do not demonstrate continuous improvement initiatives: too often, objectives are lofty, with no clear description of one or several continuous improvement initiatives. Although, standard does not prescribe it, the plant food and quality and safety objective should provide a framework for a Plan - Do - Check - Act (PDCA) cycle of continuous improvement. Otherwise, management may be wasting their time.
3. Objectives for some are reactive and not proactive – for example, there is no doubt that having no customer complaints and/or product recalls are very important for the success of the facility. It is obvious there should be no product recalls and no customer complaints. In fact, it is implied in the food safety and quality policy.

While it meets the intent of the standard, establishing zero recalls and/or zero complaints, it is difficult to demonstrate continuous improvement initiative, if the company targets are based on no product recalls for several years or low customer complaints.

Management should consider proactive indicators to monitor the performance of the plant food safety management system, while continuing to monitor customer complaints and verify the effectiveness of the product recall program.

Often, site management have asked for examples of quality and/or food safety objectives, but, realistically, nothing would change with the examples, because most would not have a systematic approach for the creation and establishment of objectives in place.

Goals and objectives must be specific, measurable, realistic and attainable targets - (SMART).

SMART is a well-known method and provides a pathway for site management to create and establish objectives, which provide value-added initiatives for continuous improvement. In addition, objectives must be relevant to all levels and functions of the organization, not just for quality control, or production efficiencies or sales forecasts.

There are between 8 to 12 processes that exist for any company’s operation, regardless of the size and complexity of the business. If each process-owner establishes one objective that can generate added value and continuous improvement, it can be very beneficial to the company's operation.

For example, each process-owner is accountable for the establishment of the objectives associated with the process, thus, they will monitor performance, report status to site management and issue corrective actions, if objectives have not been met. It is also important to increase targets every year, if objectives have been met, to continually improve process operation. One pitfall to be careful about: if the maximum limit during creation of a new objective is reached, for example 99.5%, it may not be viable to continue, because resources and expenditures would outweigh the benefits. In that case, process owners should consider new objectives.

Where do management start? The management team should start collecting and analysing information; and create a baseline. Creation of a baseline includes historical information and a forecast or trend, where the process is going upward, downward or flat. Information can include:

• needs and expectations from customers, regulatory agencies, corporate and other interested parties;
• data from inputs and outputs of each process, such as incoming delivery time and delays;
• quality of products, process and services and
• results of risk assessment

Creation of a baseline may take several months, and will depend on data availability, for example, is data collected for every transaction, every hour, every day, every week, every month and/or every year? The other challenge is creation of a baseline that would provide added value; thus, it is best for the management team and/or a group of cross-functional employees to review relevancy of the created baseline.

In some cases, training may be required and/or help of a continuous improvement responsible to identify an appropriate baseline that would generate added value and establish objectives.

It is also important to understand needs and expectations of the customers, corporate requirements, regulatory requirements and/or process activities.

Establishment of SMART objectives:

Like any type of business objective, food safety objectives should be developed following the SMART acronym. SMART objectives are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.?You can develop company-wide objectives or narrow down to individual departments within your food business. Whenever you write the food safety objectives for your food business always check that they cover these five aspects.

• Specific for your food business. Use your business data and target to areas of improvement for your own business.
• Measurable food safety objectives are just that – you should be able to determine compliance to your objective through some type of solid metric. This means that you need to associate actual targets to the objective. I always find that having numerical targets makes it easier to not only report on progress but to also motivate the food handling team towards achieving our goals.
• It is no good writing an objective that will never be achieved. Always start of small and in bite sized chunks. You are more likely to succeed this way.
• Realistic objectives are closely aligned to making your food safety objectives achievable. They need to be realistic to your food business not someone else’s.
• Timely objectives motivate us to achieve the outcome. All objectives should have a time limit otherwise nothing ever gets done. Time restrictions are a catalyst for goal achievement. Just remember that “tomorrow never comes”.

Communicating to your team:

Once the food safety objectives have been developed make sure that they are communicated to all relevant staff. Communication can be as easy as displaying the food safety objectives on staff notice boards or published on internal intranets to verbal discussion at staff or tool-box meetings. You may want to also implement training to individual departments if you have also developed departmental objectives on top of business-wide objectives.

Examples of food safety objectives

Some examples of food safety objectives include:

• To respond to customer complaints within x hours
• To reduce the number of customer complaints by x% on previous year.
• To maintain a minimum ‘G-rating’ for our third party certification audit.
• To complete all verification activities within 5 days of the scheduled date.
• To complete food safety induction training for new employees before job commencement.
• To ensure that there is no listeria monocytogenes detected in any of x product.
• To maintain a minimum of x% for all internal GMP audits.
• To not have any food recalls during the 2018 year.

Just remember to make sure that they are relevant to your food business and you include reporting metrics to suit.

Continuous Improvement - PDCA action plans to meet SMART Targets:

Too often, action items will include monitoring, reviewing, analysing, meeting, to name a few examples. But it is not sufficient, and it is only part of the PDCA continuous improvement cycle. Action plans should be developed with responsibilities, action items and timeframes. The timeframe would be normally 12 months and the team should consist of 2 to 3 people to make sure the continuous improvement is progressing.

Sometimes, a larger group may be required, but a maximum of six people in the team is recommended to be productive and move the initiative forward without undue delays. The team may include subject matter experts on the technology and/or cross functional responsibility, such as maintenance, human resources, shipping and receiving, supply chain and logistics.

If the group is too large, for example 10 people on the team, it becomes difficult to coordinate logistics and discussions become longer, and, sometimes, unproductive.

The process-owner should lead group discussions to manage time and show his/her commitment and accountability.

If the company has the means, it would be very useful to have a continuous improvement specialist in the team, who could help with establishment of objectives and creation of continuous improvement initiatives for the process-owners. The continuous improvement person needs to have a background in LEAN manufacturing, Root Cause Analysis techniques, 5S and Six Sigma and can be very instrumental in guiding process-owner(s) in the right direction.

Finally, before starting with establishment of objectives and continuous improvement initiatives, process-owners and personnel, associated with the process, should have adequate training. Training can be provided in-house or by a well-established training organization. In addition, there is a significant amount of literature on the Internet that could be helpful.

Below is an example of SMARTER Objectives, with a “Plan-Do-Act-Check” cycle.

Corrective actions and management review:

It is good business practice to generate a corrective action, if objectives have not been met during the annual management review. Arguably, a process had sufficient time to make necessary adjustments in the 12-month period. Generating a corrective action, when an objective has not been met, will help to determine the underlying cause before establishing new objectives for the following year. Or, the current objectives will be adjusted based on the results of the underlying causes.?

Objectives should be reviewed every year, most likely, during the management review meetings. Process-owners should discuss their objectives, their accomplishments, when objectives have been met, and underlying causes, when they have not been met.

For those, who have met their objectives, targets should increase, following the same guidelines, discussed in previous sections. And for those, who have not met their objectives, adjustments should be made to lower their targets or to try for another year.

One important fact - the establishment of quantifiable objectives must demonstrate continuous improvement(s), added value and economic benefits. Otherwise, process- owners may waste significant resources, which could be used for other activities. Plant management should challenge the process-owners to ensure they are focused and can demonstrate tangible and quantifiable benefits, when developing and implementing process-specific objectives.

Reporting on Outcomes:

The most common platform to report on the compliance of your food safety objectives is through the management review process. You can also provide reporting through weekly or monthly team meetings. Always make it clear what your objective is and the result to date. Data graphs are a great way to visually represent your progress and provide a trigger to fix or correct non-compliance before they escalate.