Revealing Best Practices for Food & Beverage Plants

(IngredientNews Staff) – At International Food Products November webinar, Raising the Bar: Best Practices at Food and Beverage Plants, we discussed how to improve plant processes and how to develop a culture of continuous improvement in your plant. International Food Products Operations Manager, Chris Landry, and All Star Associations Director of Purchasing, Joel Bryant, led the discussion. To find out more, read below or view it here.

Maximizing Employee Engagement and Efficiency

Key elements of success are:

• Education and training
• Tapping into the teams’ talents
• Standardized processes
• A safe space for employees to share experiences. Each day at International Food Products’ Aviator Plant, we start in the Green Room, which is a safe environment where people can speak freely and where we build our teams’ trust. Here we connect with our employees and talk about key responsibilities.

Cultivating a Culture of Continuous Improvement

How do we develop our employees? It starts with finding the right people. At International Food Products, Chris Landry interviews every single employee before they are hired at the plant. Employees are educated daily on food processes and taught to do the right thing, even when no one is looking. Teamwork is critical. There is an “I” in team because individual contributions are important. Teamwork is about respect for coworkers, processes, facility and products we handle. There is no substitute for good leadership, which starts at the top and moves down.

Fine Tuning Plant Processes

Employees meet every morning to discuss key responsibilities. Every day we make sure everyone is connected. Leaders at the International Food Products’ plant touch base twice daily. This helps to eliminate miscommunication. If something incorrect happens, we change what we do and fix it.

Assuring Food Safety

Food safety is paramount. This is something we discuss every day with the team. Each employee is taught to manage as a CEO and take ownership for their work and the product they help produce. FSMA is changing the food environment. Because we run as a SQF Level III certified facility, we have many checks in place for our processes and great product protection devices. With these steps in place, it helps us have excellent repeatable quality performances for the products we manufacture.

Increasing Order Fill Rates

We always strive for quality immediately – if we’re not, we aren’t satisfying the customer and filling their order. A finished product is 100% on hold until quality standards are met, so the first time right is critical. It’s important to implement action plans if it’s not right the first time. Can we implement a sustainable, repeatable solution? The team needs to analyze why something went wrong. It’s critical for our people to be engaged and constantly evaluate what we have on hand.

Reducing Waste

To reduce waste, we have developed a cross functional “Task Force Team” of material handlers, operators and support staff focused on specific areas for waste. To be successful, we start with educating employees, changing processes and making it a part of our DNA so it’s right the first time.