Re-synchronizing the Gears: Data Technology Can Alleviate the Friction Between Food Production and Food Safety

November 29, 2023

Neogen's David Hatch answers the question, "How are forward-thinking companies using Neogen Analytics to make their data actionable and truly become proactive?"

 

Video Transcript

TITLE CARD: Neogen Analytics

[Music]

TITLE CARD: Re-synchronizing the Gears: Make Data Actionable

TITLE CARD: David Hatch — VP, Digital Solutions Marketing, Neogen

[A screen shows videos of David Hatch and Dan Dwyer speaking.]

Dan Dwyer: Dave, how are forward-thinking companies using Neogen Analytics to make their data actionable and truly become proactive?

David Hatch: That's a great question, Dan. You know, I I often get the opportunity to demonstrate how that works and I think what we could do is I could I could roll in here a video of a demonstration that I did recently that illustrates exactly that for me.

[The screen shows the Insights screen of the Neogen Analytics software. The tab for "FSQA" is highlighted. Other tabs are for "Drill Anywhere", "Pathogens", "Indicators", "Audit", and "Corrective Actions". There is a line graph showing "# Non-conformance" along the y-axis and "Sample Week" along the x-axis. Also shown are a table for "# Tests" and a grid of "Nonconformances by Zone". The "Nonconformance by Zone" heat grid is a 4 by 4 squares. Along the y-axis of the grid are labels of zones. Along the x-axis of the grid are labels for facilities.]

David: My eye is drawn right to this heat grid right because I can see by zone and by facility where I've got problems

[The screen shows the Insights screen of the Neogen Analytics software and a more detailed page of Nonconformance by Zone. The cursor moves over the grid to the orange square in the "Raw Tanks" column and "Zone 1" and "Zone 3" rows.]

David: And now I can see all of the locations and it turns out that my raw tanks are dirty and that's a zone one. A zone one because I mean the tanks are holding my food product.

[The screen shows the Insights screen of the Neogen Analytics software and a more detailed page of Nonconformance by Zone and the "Zone 1" for the raw tanks. The cursor moves over the grid to the orange square in the "Potable Water Site 1" column and "Zone 1" row. The cursor moves over the columns "Inside Wall of Free Tank 1" and "Inside Wall of Free Tank 5".]

David: And I can see in fact that it is the Potable Water Site One is where I'm getting the most hits. The inside of the raw tank is dirty, right? I've got two inside wall test points here that I can that I can see for tank one and tank five. but this portable water feed that's the real issue.

[The cursor moves to the top of the screen and selects the "Broadcast" icon. A prompt comes up for creating a new broadcast.]

David: What I really want to do is put the data to work for me. Remember we talked about how we make this actionable and how you can move to preventative from reactive? Well, me coming in here and seeing I've already had nine hits here—not acceptable.

[The cursor selects "Create New" in the Broadcast prompt and another prompt for "Broadcast: Nonconformances by Zone" appears.]

David: It's not acceptable. In my world, I want this data to come find me as soon as it has changed. I'm going to teach the machine how to do that.

[The cursor selects "Alert based broadcast" and set the radio button to "Alert". The cursor clicks "Add Alert Delivery Rules". A new prompt shows titled "Delivery Rules". The field "Alert Data" is set to "One or more rows must match". The field for "Delivery Rule" is set to "#Nonconformances" and clicks "Add Field". The cursor selects "Greater than or equal to" and enters the value of "1". The cursor clicks "Submit" and the prompt closes.]

David: I'm going to set a rule: You need to alert me and I'm going to set a rule every time the number of non-conformances is greater than or equal to one—don't wait for nine right? Every time this happens I want to know and I submit that.

[The prompt for "Broadcast: Nonconformances by Zone" is still visible. The cursor goes to the field labeled "Recipients" and selects "David Hatch" from the dropdown. In the field for "Email Title" is typed "Nonconformance Alert".]

David: And I say I want to know right so I'm going to go ahead and pick me as the recipient I could pick anybody and I'm going to say you know this is my non-conformance alert.

[Music]

TITLE CARD: Neogen Analytics

 

The food industry is facing a critical challenge — how to balance the need for improved food safety against the ongoing requirement to streamline production, within an era of ever-tightening regulations and dietary guidance. Currently, there exists an ever-present “pull” in all of these directions at once.

During decades of working with teams across all segments of the food industry, we have witnessed a profession that has become more preventative regarding food safety outcomes. We now see professionals who are prioritizing a food safety culture that strives to continuously improve and deliver the safest food possible to consumers. More recently, we are encountering executive teams who are expanding food safety through the launch of corporate initiatives that also protect the environment as part of an overall sustainability and social responsibility strategy.

But, as with everything, the devil lies in the details. Specifically, this relates to the industry’s ability to manage food safety data and make it actionable, such that time-to-information decreases to the point where action can be taken before contaminated food product makes its way into the consumer stream. The food industry’s ability to manage mission-critical information is a key factor in its inability to move from a reactive stance to a proactive and preventative stance. To learn more about how a preventative approach can impact production, read our blog: A Rationale to Digitize Food Safety Testing.

Food safety teams, when surveyed, often identify “compliance” as a top food safety objective — but compliance is not always tied to science-led data. In many cases, it has become an exercise in completing a standard process for the sake of adhering to a policy, rather than a data-led initiative to alter policies and processes to improve an outcome.

The use of digitally automated food safety testing systems and the analysis of resulting data can lead to new and more timely discoveries and insights. This supports a continuous improvement cycle, which is the thing to which compliance should be tied, not a set of repeating processes. Without access to timely, accurate data, and the ability to leverage this data through trending, predicting, and analyzing the results of our food safety program actions, we will not effectively achieve continuous improvement. Instead, we will simply be complying with an aging policy document and achieving the same end results.

The reality remains that many food producers are languishing in a pre-digital state. Recent survey responses illustrate just how prevalent this condition is today:

Food safety teams have not been provided with the technologies that other industries enjoy, such as cloud-based access to near real-time testing data. And yet, food safety professionals are trained in the science behind food safety, lessons learned over time, and how to utilize data to make informed decisions.

This science-led decision-making means always looking for the next improvement and always seeking the next iteration of development within the organization’s processes. Accomplishing this will not be possible until two conditions are met:

  1. Access is provided to accurate data that is made actionable through its relevance to the continuing and changing nature of food safety testing criteria, and
  2. Access to data is made timely — time-to-information is critical in being able to act on what the data reveals, such that analysis can impact action and yield desired results.

The tools to perform this analysis and enable actions to occur before issues grow to a costly and high-risk status are available today, yet their adoption is still lagging. A growing number of organizations are leaning in to digitalization of their testing and sanitation programs, however.

In fact, food safety testing automation and business performance improvements go hand in hand. Early adopters have justified the investment in digitally automated food safety testing and analytics by showing that, when automated, food safety processes can lead to — not detract from — positive business outcomes. Here are two examples:

  • Early detection and alerting of food safety issues can enable corrective actions to be triggered automatically and immediately. This can alleviate costly scrap and re-work associated with issues that go unchecked across production runs.
  • Sanitation verification trending, when digitally automated, can detect issues and re-clean requirements before they result in unplanned/unbudgeted clean-in-place (CIP) actions or the need for costly full tear-down events. This can reduce the number of production delays and resulting costs such as overtime or ingredient spoilage.

For more on this topic, see our white paper: The Real ROI of Food Safety Automation.

Neogen Analytics provides the ability to digitize, unify, and automate your food safety testing and sanitation programs, all within one simple cloud-based application.

Learn More About Neogen Analytics


Category: Food Safety, Consumer Goods, Dietary Supplements, Food & Beverage, Pet Food, Allergens, Microbiology, Pathogens, Environmental Monitoring