Why quality culture should have been included in Quality & Food Safety Standards before adding food defense and food fraud to them.

Is it all about quality?

Over the years, we’ve seen that many topics were directed to the quality function: it has a standard, it is audited, ergo: this is the responsibility of the quality department.

Examples of this are Kosher, Halal, Organic, RSPO and Rainforest Alliance: they enter the organization through marketing and sales and are covered by company values and beliefs but have nothing to do with the quality or food safety of the product.

But also, food defense and food fraud: who are the main contributors to these topics? For Food defense I see facilities and HR, and for food fraud I’m looking at purchasing and supply chain.

Quality doesn’t own quality, it facilitates quality

Organisations where the quality department is still the owner of all of this, didn’t make the shift to the 4th?generation of quality yet: “stakeholder quality” as I call it in my eBook ‘The future of Quality”.

In this generation, the relevant stakeholder takes ownership of a specific topic and requirement within a standard that is closest to the function or the purpose of the role. It is creating a quality culture, where everyone is contributing.?

The role of the quality department is twofold in this: they are the owner of some processes/requirements, and they support the other functions.

The supporting/facilitating role is to explain to the owner what the exact requirement means, make sure what is done fits within the documented management system and do internal audits to verify compliance and look for opportunities for improvement.

Cause and effect

When this quality culture is not installed, the quality department will become overloaded with taking care of all the different requirements and there is no time to focus on the different topics.

Without a quality culture, there is no focus to meet or exceed customer expectations, no focus to adhere to industry standards and regulations and no focus on continuous improvement and learning.

Where focus goes, energy flows. And where energy flows, whatever you're focusing on grows.?(T. Robbins).?

Not having this focus, makes an organization extremely vulnerable:

1. Not meeting or exceeding customer expectations will cost you customers, turnover, profit and in the end, there is no business anymore.
2. Weak adherence to industry standards is linked to customer expectations: your customers expect you are certified and that you’re not downgraded from e.g., an A to a B, or from higher level to foundation level. This could cost customers.
3. Weak adherence to regulations is obviously a direct risk for the organization: your site could be closed in no time.
4. No focus on continuous improvement and learning: standing still is going backwards. You don’t want to be the last one people are considering working for or buying from.

How to make it work

What we do with our Call-an-Expert clients is:

1. Define the standard(s) they want to implement
2. We shortly explain for each requirement what it’s about
3. For every requirement, discuss who the owner is
4. We discuss expectations with the different stakeholders and requirement owners
5. The owner of the requirement makes an assessment if the requirement in fully, partly, or not implemented
6. We develop an action plan together with the process owners
7. Process owners send us the results of the actions taken
8. We evaluate and give feedback until compliance can be demonstrated
9. When we don’t receive actions on time, we keep people accountable and ask for the work done
10. A monthly reporting on the progress against action plan and compliance

We also encourage every department to have a policy that is aligned with the vision and mission of the company, and from there define objectives and KPIs (this is something we do with quality managers within our online coaching program QTIP).?

When a new regulation or requirement in a standard pop up, it is to the executive committee and/or management team to decide if this is specific for one department and therefore their policy, or if it must be included in the mission of the company and therefore has to be translated in all the policies, with only 1 owner of the overall KPI.

Example 1:

When a standard requires to add sustainability to the quality policy, I would flag it up as something that has to be included in the company vision and/or mission statement and not only in the quality policy.?

In this way all departments must work on sustainability, include something that supports that sustainability topic in their policy, and it’s not seen as something to be managed by quality alone anymore.

Example 2:

A requirement to meet and exceed customer expectations is not only applicable for the quality department: in every contact there is with a customer, these expectations must be met or exceeded, in quality but also in sales, logistics and customer service. The overall ownership and accountability might be at sales, as they probably have the most contact with the customer, but the result is the combined effort of different departments.

Why quality culture should have been included in Quality & Food Safety Standards before adding food defense and food fraud to them.

It’s clear that not everything that is a requirement within a Quality & Food Safety standard is automatically the responsibility or accountability of the quality department.

A last example to demonstrate this.

Food fraud is committed for economical gain: the quality department doesn’t have any insights on cost of ingredients or the financial situation at a supplier, but procurement has. These financials change over time: it is the responsibility of procurement to flag these changes during the year, and not only once a year during the management review.?

If quality culture would have been introduced before food fraud, there would be more focus on food fraud and make the organization less vulnerable.

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