Quick KPI for Food Processors

Small / new company?  Tight on resources?  How do you get a handle on where you are at with your food safety program and the culture that is in your building?  KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) can fill this need.  You don’t need to purchase a system (using excel can be very powerful), but you do need to analyze the data that you collect.  True – a third party audit will tell you where you are with regards to your food safety plan but knowing where your challenges lie before an audit (regulatory or not) is huge to the bottom line.  Why wait for an annual audit when a KPI can tell you where you are at on a weekly / monthly basis.

Step one is to collect data.  Depending on what your process is, this can change – you will know what kind of information is needed to gather (you most likely collect many types of information, pick 2 or three to become your KPIs).  Just make sure that the information is “important to you” and is “actionable”.  Important in the respect that the information can tell you how your business is doing.  Actionable in the respect that, good or bad, you can make changes based on the information.  Example – customer complaints.  Trending customer complaints tell you how your business and brand is being perceived and what issues are not being caught before leaving your door.  These complaints are also actionable in two ways;

1.       Short term – feedback on any issues with your product.  Did some-one find a bolt in the product – where did that bolt come from?  Is your equipment is good repair? Is it a onetime incident or do you have a larger problem?  Are your metal detectors working properly?

2.       Long term – trending of information can show you if you have something that can be looked into for improvement.  Complaints of underweight product for example.  Do you need better weigh scales, more employee training, better calibration? Are your customer complaints very low and can be used as a marketing advantage?

Step two is to analyze the data.  Simple is best when you first start doing KPIs.  Say you are doing a weekly GMP checklist/audit.  Summarize all the infractions that you find.  See if you see the same issue day after day.  Create a pie chart to view the result.  Look at the charts from month to month to locate trends.  Example – an overall 20% reduction in hoses being left on the floor from September to December.

Step Three is to share this information.  Post it, have regular meetings, talk about them, publish an internal newspaper with the information on it.  Be as transparent as possible – good or bad your employees will want to know what is going on.  Poor trends can be made into actions – retraining your production staff on calibration of metal detectors.  Good trends can be a basis for appreciation events – pizza lunch, gift card, etc.  Even if it is a thank-you and a hand shake from the CEO, the employees will see this and appreciate it. Be creative!

Moving forward with the KPIs.  Make sure that it is not just one person collecting / analyzing / sharing the information.  Make it a cross-functional group.  Doing this will further breed team work and foster an effective food safety culture.   If management sees these things as important to the business so will the workers.

 

General KPIs that can be created:

1.       Customer Complaints.

2.       Housekeeping  and GMP audits

3.       Audit scores

4.       Waste rates

5.       Reject amounts

6.       Internal foreign material catches

7.       Pest control trends

8.       ATP results

9.       Finished product micro reports