How A Food Business Benefits From Measuring the Efficacy of its Programs

How A Food Business Benefits From Measuring the Efficacy of its Programs

By Felix Amiri

“Efficacy”, in this article, means the capacity to produce desirable results. Without measuring the efficacy of its programs, a business can only expect precarious success. An operation’s existence and success are best validated through confirming the efficacy of implemented programs and strategies. The right things must be measured to confirm this efficacy. Failing to track success or measuring the wrong things can be equally devastating to an operation. Common terminologies for describing business success include: “Return on Investment (ROI)”, “Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)”, etc. The American Society for Quality defines a key performance indicator (KPI) as “...a statistical measure of how well an organization is doing in a particular area. A KPI could measure an organization’s financial performance or how it is holding up against customer requirements.”1 This description makes sense, except some businesses do not exactly know how to define their desirable performance goals. Typical practices around determining business success lean more to the pursuit of desired, instead of desirable, goals. As a result, many businesses fall into the trap of only pursuing profit-making desires to the neglect of critical desirable goals. An important desirable goal is gaining end-user loyalty because of the consistent delivery of reliable products. This is the underlying reason and must be the focus when confirming the efficacy of programs. If your operation does not track its success through confirming the efficacy of its programs, it needs to start for the sake of its survival and success. Before thinking that you do not have the time for the required commitment, you should consider the following: • The time wasted in proceeding blindly without measuring progress • Lost opportunities where there is no tracking of successes and failures, with preventive actions • Available outside resources and assistance Desirable Operation Success-Tracking: We frequently hear about operation efficiencies and effectiveness. Rarely do we hear about confirming the desirable efficacy of their programs and processes. What should you measure to confirm success? This recent poll on LinkedIn provides some insights.2 Which of the listed areas of focus do you see as the desirable nucleus of dominant effort, efficiency, and effect (the NODE)?

Roughly 70% of people voting on this chose option B, and that is correct. Viable and successful operations measure and confirm the efficacy of their plans, actions, processes, programs, and systems. The confirmation of efficacy starts with the activities of the different functions. A Typical food operation has the following functions: 1. Company Administration (Office, Legal, Finance, Public

Relations) 2. Regulatory Affairs 3. Human Resources (Employment and Training) 4. Procurement /Purchasing 5. Logistics (Receiving and Shipping) 6. Operations/Processing 7. Quality Assurance/Food Safety 8. Sanitation 9. Maintenance (Equipment and Facility) 10. R & D (Product Development) 11. Marketing & Sales Your operation no doubt implements programs to meet regulations or other requirements. Do you ever confirm the efficacy of these programs? Chances are that your regular routines already include the measurement of success. For example, your customer feedback is a success-tracking routine. Some operations call this “customer complaints tracking”, and it is mostly done for compliance. Regulatory compliance may be tracked but it should not be the primary focus for at least four reasons: 1. Complying with applicable regulations is only a minimum requirement for any business. 2. Focusing only on compliance places an operation in a perpetually precarious position. 3. An exclusive focus on compliance ends up distracting, instead of helping, the operation. 4. The excessive pursuit of compliance competes against confirming the efficacy of implemented programs, processes, and controls. When the right things (the critical & desirable success factors) are measured and tracked, and their efficacy is confirmed, the benefits are huge. In the book: “Efficacy versus Compliance3 , some key things to track are listed. They include: • Consumer (End-User Experience) Feedback • Product Safety and Quality Performance • Failure Incident Reduction • Internal Audit Findings • Success of Continuous Improvement Projects • Cost Control Programs • Sales & Related Programs Everything measured and tracked needs to support the desirable end-user experience. This proves the efficacy and provides the best validation for an operation’s programs and activities. If you do not have the resources for the required tracking and measurements, you could seek outside help from partners like MPO, educational institutions, consultants, regulatory agency inspectors, accountants, etc. Felix Amiri is the author of Efficacy versus Compliance. He is a part-time instructor at the Institute for Food Processing Technology (Conestoga College), and an independent consultant.

1 American Society for Quality, KPI: https://asq.org/quality-resources/quality-glossary 2 Node Poll on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/felix-amiri_a-node-poll-onbusiness-success-for-anonymous-activity-6957786442349559809-yNfP?utm_ source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web 3 FSQA Efficacy Versus Compliance: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B08RHC9SPL