A Tree Fallen: Food Safety Obstacles We Must Overcome
January 19, 2024
Neogen's Amy Wilder answers the question, "How are users able to utilize Neogen Analytics to overcome the obstacles that they're facing on a day-to-day basis?"
Video Transcript
TITLE CARD: Neogen Analytics
[Music]
TITLE CARD: A Tree Fallen: Overcoming Obstacles in Food Safety
TITLE CARD: Amy Wilder — Digital Solutions Product Manager, Neogen
[The video shows a screen from Neogen Analytics Dashboard titled "Satus for: 3_Sloppy Joe's RTE". Videos of Amy Wilder and Dan Dwyer speaking are seen in the margin.]
Dan Dwyer: Amy, how are users able to utilize Neogen Analytics to overcome the obstacles that they're facing on a day-to-day basis?
Amy Wilder: When we first log into the application, you're brought to your dashboard. The first place here that can help drive you to where you're going to focus your attention today would be what you're seeing on the dashboard here.
[The cursor points toward a tile on the screen under "Environmental Testing". The tile is labelled "1 Sample analysis".]
Amy Wilder: I can see from my screen I have a late sample analysis. So whether that's my responsibility to do sampling or maybe I have a team who collects samples, I immediately know I may need to assign someone to take care of this late sample analysis or it could be myself.
[The cursor points toward a tile on the screen under "Environmental Testing". The tile is labelled "1 Corrective action".]
Amy Wilder: Then I also notice that I have a corrective action that needs some review. So the dashboard lends you to kind of drive you to where you may need to focus yourself or your team.
[The cursor points toward the navigation under "Environmental Testing" and the selection "Floorplans".]
Amy: The other area that I would also call out would be the floorplans here.
[The screen shows the Floorplans screen of the Neogen Analytics software with a facility floorplan marked with different colored dots for testing points. The cursor points to an area with fewer colored dots. Videos of Amy Wilder and Dan Dwyer speaking are seen in the margin.]
Amy: So when we think about all the sampling we're doing, the amount of coverage that we have. "Are we sampling the right areas?" "Are we missing anything?" Maybe I'm new a QA manager, as an example, and I just started at this new company here and I'm looking at my coverage and I see, "Oh! I don't see any testing sites over here!" I could then potentially go out to the floor and evaluate what we're sampling, why and look at the equipment here, and the level of risk. Then say maybe we do need to add some sample sites here.
[The cursor points toward the navigation and selects "Insights". The Neogen Analytics screen shows a page titled "Insights". The tab labelled "Environmental" is highlighted. Other tabs are labelled "Sanitation" and "Product Testing". The "Environmental" tab shows the FSQA tab selected showing a line graph and a data table.]
Amy: Within the application, all of the data is aggregated into what we call Insights. As it's aggregating data, you have a variety of different analyses. You might be doing—ATP, pathogens, indicators, things like that. When you're looking at all of that data, where do we need to focus our attention? One of the things that I often think about is, "Are we testing all of the locations within our facility?" "Have we overlooked some?" Maybe we tested something 10 months ago and—for whatever reason—we haven't tested it recently. We have this dashboard called "Test Points".
[The cursor points toward the tab navigation that has "FQSA" highlighted and scrolls to the option "Test Points" and selects it. The "Environmental" tab shows the "Test Points" tab selected showing a bar graph, a line graph, and a data table. Mousing over the bar graph shows that they are different facilities. The bars in the graph are labelled "1_Holy Cow Dairy", "2_Be Prepared Gourmet", "3_Sloppy Joe's RTE", and "4_Berry Good Produce".]
Amy: If I have multiple facilities that I oversee—this first example here, there's four different facilities—I can see the coverage for each of my facilities. So my dairy has about 95% coverage as opposed to, let's say, my berry facility which has 32%.
[The Neogen Analytics screen scolls to the data tables.]
Amy: Non-conformance by test point. So this will help drive you to, I would say, your repeat offender list. So what test points are failing regularly. Maybe we need to do an investigation or take a look at the test points that are routinely not failing. That's how Insights is helpful as it's aggregated all of this data. You can kind of drill into "What are we doing?" "Where are we spending too much time?" "Where are we maybe not spending any time or enough time?" and kind of take action from there.
[Music]
TITLE CARD: Neogen Analytics
By: David Hatch
Vice President of Digital Solutions Marketing
Neogen Corporation
Robert Frost, one of the most famous American poets, used his amazing gift of metaphor to write about the human capacity for overcoming objects thrown in our path:
On a Tree Fallen Across the Road
(To hear us talk)
The tree the tempest with a crash of wood
Throws down in front of us is not bar
Our passage to our journey’s end for good,
But just to ask us who we think we are
Insisting always on our own way so.
She likes to halt us in our runner tracks,
And make us get down in a foot of snow
Debating what to do without an ax.
And yet she knows obstruction is in vain:
We will not be put off the final goal
We have it hidden in us to attain,
Not though we have to seize earth by the pole
And, tired of aimless circling in one place,
Steer straight off after something into space.
—Robert Frost
As food safety professionals, we experience many conceptual “trees” across our roads. For instance, we follow testing policy and procedures because “that is the way things are done.” But does it make sense to continually — and repeatedly — swab the same locations for the same contaminants, expecting that the results we generate will point us to new and improved outcomes?
Corporate inertia, defined as the inability to change long-standing norms like the one mentioned above, is an example of a conceptual “tree” across our path toward improved outcomes. This blockage is one of the reasons why technology and digital automation are rapidly being adopted by forward-thinking organizations. These organizations have found that humans cannot analyze PDF reports and spreadsheet data as quickly and completely as a modern, database-driven system. And, when an analytics engine is added to the equation, along with new technologies such as rules-based data engines, the results can be enlightening.
Neogen’s open approach to ingesting and aggregating information allows food safety teams to make data actionable. Instead of having to tediously pore through reports and spreadsheets looking for anomalies and non-conforming results, imagine if the relevant data were to come and find you, right when it matters most! With this improved access and capability, data is no longer an obstacle or a chore — it becomes the basis for you to meet your final goal.
This is the new age of data-driven food safety, and the new path to follow if you are, in Frost’s words, “tired of aimless circling in one place” and want to “steer straight off after something into space.”
To learn more, schedule a demo. We will show you Neogen Analytics, the enterprise solution for fallen “trees” … and food safety automation.
Learn More About Neogen Analytics
Category: Food Safety, Consumer Goods, Dietary Supplements, Food & Beverage, Pet Food, Allergens, Microbiology, Pathogens, Environmental Monitoring