TECH TALK
Measuring for Food Safety By Daphne Nuys-Hall, Technical Director, Meat & Poultry Ontario
T
he concept of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) has been around for a long time in business and manufacturing. Specifically, KPI stands for key performance indicator, a quantifiable measure of performance over time for a specific objective. KPIs provide targets for teams to shoot for, milestones to gauge progress, and insights that help people across the organization make better decisions. KPIs have been used in sales, production, and even human resources. But what about food safety? What KPIs does your company have in place to measure the success of your food safety programs? And what influence do these have on your food safety culture? The first step in establishing KPIs is to determine what your food safety objectives are. What is it that your company is trying to achieve? It is important to clearly state the objective. Let’s look a quick example that can be used in a meat processing facility today – the objective would be to reduce customer complaints by 5%. Once the objective has been determined, the activities that need to occur (what measurements need to be taken) to support
reaching that objective must be defined - these are the key performance indicators. Therefore, in this case a company would need to collect data to first determine the number of customer complaints and then evaluate that data on an on-going basis to measure their success at achieving the objective – in this case a reduction of 5%. But where would the company find this data? For this example of customer complaints, it is a requirement of Ontario Meat Regulation 31/05 to have a documented Recall Program that must include “methods to investigate and respond to consumer complaints”. Often this means recording customer complaints when they are received. However, what happens to those customer complaints once they are resolved? Is it just filed away in binder on a shelf never to be looked at again? Take the time to log the complaint into a database – it doesn’t have to be complicated, just a simple spreadsheet will do. Every time a complaint is recorded, review the previous complaints for any trends, such as multiple complaints about the same issue, the same customer having repeat complaints, etc. Once KPIs are measured and the results are shared, then informed decisions Continued on page 36
Your Insurance Policy Is Likely Going To Change
Make sure you are aware of new exclusions to property and liability insurance polices focusing on virus and bacteria that could potentially effect you. Discuss with your insurance professional prior to renewing your policy.
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BlockTalk - Spring 2022
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