Why Do We Sample and Test!?

When I'm in a food factory, I often ask an operator: “Why do you take this sample and what are you looking for”? It sounds an easy enough question; unfortunately, the most common answer is: “I don’t know; we have always taken this sample!”

So, on I go in my quest for answers, and I ask the QA manager (that poor person, who is having to put up with me for most of the day): “Who is responsible for your sampling plans”? If I’m lucky, the QA manager says: “I am!” and we can have a “heart to heart” about the impact of test results on the business (or as my connection Roy Kirby puts it: "The result is the start of the problem for the factory!").

It is no secret that sampling and testing is an important expense for a food business and in my experience, the cost is always challenged during budget rounds, because “Surely, we do not need to test so many samples”? So to be prepared and answer this question, we need to start with WHY.

You see, if we don’t have a clear WHY, the outcome of the budget discussion is that we often end up with a majority of “have to” samples, those samples that must be taken for compliance with regulatory, standard and customer requirements. And guess what; as most of these compliance tests are finished product tests, the “have to” samples have arguably the lowest “utility value” for our business.

(Back in 2016, I wrote about the “utility value” of micro testing and you can read this article here: Food Micro Testing: A Value Proposition! | LinkedIn)

Furthermore, I think if we sample and test because “we have to!” (by the way, another answer that is very common to my operator question above), we are missing the point. To me, the most important reason for sampling and testing in a food factory is: to verify that our food safety & quality controls are working.

And so these days, I start every presentation, webinar and customer engagement, with the Integrated FSQ Pyramid, to explain WHY we sample and test. WHY we need to invest time and effort in the design of our sampling plans for in-process, environmental and finished product monitoring and WHY our results reporting needs to initiate the best possible management response.

The Integrated FSQ pyramid illustrates that the most important reason for sampling and testing is to provide us with the assurance that our food safety & quality controls are working. And I think, sharing this pyramid with operators and management, will give us a "WHY" answer for those inevitable budget questions and a tool to educate our frontline teams.

So, next time we meet and I ask the question: “Why do you sample and test?” please answer: “Because we want to”!

Jack

Disclaimer: This article is the personal opinion of the writer and does not reflect the opinion or policies of my employer(s). The use of the Integrated FSQ Pyramid is by written permission only.