Leveraging Partner Expertise for Success

1. Risk-Based Assessments. The quality and safety of your finished product is as reliant on the services and supplies coming from external providers as it is on your internal operations. Thus, it is critical to assess and mitigate these potential risks, as well as the potential introduction of contaminants. Not only can these quickly spiral into food safety and public health issues, but even the indication of such an issue could cause a failure on a third-party audit — or even federal inspection. Thus, it is critical to protect your business as well as your customers and ensure audit-readiness throughout your facility. It is here that high-value partners can help, not only providing you with products and service programs that enable you to meet — and exceed — regulatory and customer requirements, but also training your teams on compliance best practices for compliance. Your partners also should be able to provide you with pre-audit assessments applicable to their services (e.g., cleaning, sanitation, pest management, etc.) to help identify, prevent, or address issues before they lead to citations, fines and/or shutdowns.

2. Receiving & Inventory Management. As manufacturers are compelled to develop ever-greater, and potentially complex, varieties of products to meet consumer taste and health preferences, so, too, do your supply chain and inbound shipments become increasingly complex. Such complexity also increases risk — of inferior ingredients, contaminated supplies, pest infestations, and other such food safety and quality risks. One of the most essential practices for prevention in this area is the inspection of inputs at the entry point; and it is a practice with which your partners can help. For example, through custom consultation and an assessment of your receiving protocols, your pest management provider can help ensure best practices in the inspection of shipments and ingredients for signs of spoilage, contamination, or pest infestation or damage. By reviewing your inventory management and storage practices, your partner can help you mitigate pests and food safety issues, prevent loss due to spoilage, and maintain a hygienic environment.

3. Food Specialization. Organic. GMO-free. Allergen-free. Natural. Consumers are continually seeking a vast array of “free-from” foods as evidenced by the growth of the U.S. organic market which increased 6.3% to break through the $50 billion mark for the first time in 2018; non-GMO claims driving innovation – particularly in plant-based meats; and allergen-free and other “free-from” foods one of the fastest growing categories in the food industry. Because such products require special considerations, they can cause manufacturer to have to make significant operational changes from supply to finished product. This, too, is an area in which your vendor partners, particularly those in sanitation and food safety, can be of assistance. Not only can they help ensure your lines, and environment, are properly cleaned and sanitized to prevent flavor, allergen, or other carryover between products, a high-value partner can help streamline processes for applicability to your full SKU-mageddon range of products. 

4. Cleaning & Sanitation. Having a variety of flavors and label claims for your products can increase your customer base and profitability, but the increased changeover and related productivity can take a chunk out of your bottom line. Strategizing with your cleaning and sanitation partners can help to minimize this through an assessment of your current programs to address procedures, cleaning frequency, corrective actions and pest risks; development of more efficient practices that take these, and your increased changeover, into consideration; and the application of innovative high-performance cleaning chemicals for increased efficacy as well as efficiency.