Best practices in food safety

Todd Wallin, president of Ellison’s Bakery in Ft. Wayne, Ind., said the company employs the continuous improvement method in its operations.

“One of the areas we changed in our plant based on our learnings from [continuous improvement] was adding magnets on our crunch line. We have had metal detection for many years and this was an additional step to further protect our product and our customers and consumers,” he said.

Other best practices deal with product testing and employee safety. “With regards to food safety we are doing far more testing, both internal testing and testing we send to outside laboratories. We are testing more of our raw materials and nearly all of our finished goods for pathogens. In the baking industry this was not the norm just a few short years ago,” Wallin said.

The company also looked for ways to engage the employees in safety. “We launched a computer-based training program internally specifically for employee safety training, and also an employee lead safety committee. Just this year we launched a new safety rewards program with a prize lottery-type system,” said Wallin.

At the Kraft Foods’ plant in Kendallville, Ind., Dave Herrington, associate director, Kraft Safety & Environmental, said the focus was on employee and food safety. “When it comes to employee and plant safety, we have three broad focus areas:

• Leadership. “Safety success starts with leadership. We have clearly defined safety leadership expectations that we hold our leaders accountable for in our performance management system,” he said.
• Compliance. There are thorough systems to help ensure compliance, including model compliance programs, safety training, and a robust internal and external auditing process for all Kraft facilities.
• Employee involvement. “We strive to ensure that our safety process gives all of our employees a voice in the management of safety,” Herrington said. All employees have a voice in the process, and the opportunity to get involved, participate, and “own” the safety process. “Employee ownership and involvement is critical to our success,” he said. “Integrated Lean Six Sigma has been a great enabler for us on employee involvement for safety.”

Plant Manager Mike Hughes said the plant has implemented a Six Sigma process to train hourly and salaried employees to be Green and Black Belts using the DMAIC (design, measure, analyze, improve, control) process.

The plant is also following several lean processes such as 5S, visual management and center lining, Hughes said.

“A best practice has been the investment in our hourly technicians to use the DMAIC process. They have really shined and several have moved to other Kraft plants to share best practices. Another best practice has been the integration of the Continuous Improvement team into our marketing and business teams — looking at opportunities across the whole supply chain from end to end.”

— Sarah Kennedy