A (supply) chain reaction

New initiatives are poised to impact and improve safety within the supply chain. A safe workplace for employees and a safe shopping environment for consumers is a top priority for most businesses. In the food industry, that desire for safety stretches into the supply chain. Collectively, grocery stores and warehouse operations have been working hard to improve supply chain safety, but industry observers say the pressure to expand freshly prepared food options continues to create new areas of concern. In order to best capitalize on prepared food revenue grocers need to establish full, commercial grade food prep kitchens. Along with that comes the need to establish proper food rotation management that ensures the highest levels of food safety are being met. “Consumer demand and increased competitiveness are transforming grocery stores into small food processing facilities,” says Katie Das, global marketing manager with Diversey Consulting. With that, she says, come an exponentially higher number of risks. The Sturtevant, Wis.-based company is an independent consulting group of Sealed Air Diversey Care and focuses on risk management consulting including food safety, operational efficiency and brand protection. “In-store food preparation is on the rise and many grocery stores are competing with food service facilities, selling take-out and eat-in meals while some, such as Mariano’s, are even featuring tapas bars,” says Das. With the current emphasis on local sourcing and localvore culture, grocers’ quality assurance and food safety departments are dealing with a greater number of suppliers, all with varying levels of food safety awareness. Observers say inadequacies in staff training methods and the additional challenges of having a high number of multi-lingual employees are among the lead items impacting food safety for retailers. Jim Gallagher, business development manager, food retail, for Globe Food Equipment Co., based in Dayton, Ohio, says management should take this issue by the reins and oversee training more closely, including ensuring all shifts are attended and sign-off on training. In Globe’s attempt to help retailers attain the highest level of safety possible, all its slicers come with a laminated cleaning, sanitizing and inspecting instruction sheet. “Many stores require slicer cleaning every two hours and it is critical this is relayed to workers,” says Gallagher. “Following proper cleaning and sanitizing procedures as outlined is important to eliminate food borne pathogens.” He adds that the easier the equipment is to clean, the more likely it is to be cleaned properly. Globe premium slicers are constructed with stainless steel, which Gallagher says is much easier to sanitize and is less likely to pit and corrode than anodized aluminum. Another employee hazard, particularly working with slicers and the like, are cuts to hands. DayMark Safety Systems has worked with risk and safety teams at several grocery chains and found that a high frequency of cut injuries led to increased insurance costs and lost worker productivity for grocers. “Grocers wanted an affordable solution for reducing hand injuries, ensuring safe food handling and decreasing annual operating costs,” says Ed Sharek, senior product development manager for CMC Group/DayMark Safety Systems. To help, DayMark offers its HexArmor NXT Series gloves. Officials for the Bowling Green, Ohio-based company say the gloves offer grocery employees optimal cut protection. Made from materials that provide much higher cut and abrasion resistance compared to traditional gloves, they also offer unique knife and blade-slip protection and the NXT Series gloves can be worn underneath standard disposable foodservice gloves to prevent cross-contamination, officials add. While food safety improvements have made an appreciable difference, several concerns still linger. Sharek says that in order to effect long-term change and continuously provide the safest food operation possible, initiatives for creating a safe workplace and establishing a sound food safety program must be driven throughout the organization—from executive leadership to store management. “Cross training in safe food handling, temperature monitoring and general compliance is often difficult for grocery store leadership as entry-level employees do not always follow the training they have been given or retain the information they have learned,” he says. DayMark has also introduced the 9700 Food Rotation Management Terminal, which when used with DayMark’s permanent, repositionable and dissolvable direct thermal food labels, provides grocers with a user-friendly, automated solution to handwritten food labels. Sharek says this has the potential to save retailers thousands of dollars annually in employee training, illegible labels, inaccurate hold times, food waste and health code citations. Company officials say food service establishments often see a minimum of $3,650 annual savings in food prep costs, when considering that the average kitchen saves a minimum of one hour per day when not handwriting labels. Observers say more work is also needed in designing and implementing clearer programs around cleaning and sanitation. Many add that training and education are needed to ensure that staff understands how, what and why to clean. To do so, multilingual programs need to be designed to address training of diverse staff. Designing facilities with safety in mind—making them easy to clean and sanitize on an ongoing basis—is a critical next step. Beyond this, retailers are also challenged with finding new ways to minimize the risk of food borne illnesses by keeping track of important food safety measures, such as temperature controls throughout the entire supply chain. Sealed Air’s Diversey Consulting has designed a food safety curricula that includes classroom and online educational courses. The company also offers on-the-job training for employees after they have taken an initial education class. “Our Performance Management System combines DIY internal auditing with on-the-job training to make sure that important cleaning and food safety skills are being maintained throughout the organization,” says Das. Sealed Air has also developed in-transit and on-site temperature monitoring systems that help retailers to minimize their food safety risks. Its in-store temperature monitoring system allows monitoring via mobile sensors positioned wherever temperature control is essential, such as refrigerators, freezers, while cooking, hot tables, salad bars and ice machines. Its TempTRIP in-transit temperature monitoring system allows customers to track temperatures of sensitive foods in refrigerated trucks, in distribution centers and even shipping docks. According to Das, temperature data is recorded via reusable data chips that can be applied on pallets or even individual boxes of goods and then reused when the load arrives to its destination. Both TempTRIP and its in-store monitoring systems allow for real time data reporting and customized dashboards according to customer’s needs. DeltaTrak, based in Pleasanton, Calif., has introduced FlashTrak Telematics, a monitoring and tracking solution designed to meet the needs of growers, shippers, carriers and receivers. This solution uses technology that will allow temperature monitoring to begin at the point of harvest and continue with the product as it travels throughout the cold chain. According to company officials, DeltaTrak’s new internal product temperature emulation technology provides accurate internal product temperatures without the need for pulp testing, making this solution unique in the market. While most telematics solutions focus on vehicle telemetry, fuel efficiency, driver habits and operational benefits, officials at DeltaTrak say FlashTrak allows users to improve product quality by providing key data that will help increase product shelf life and reduce shrink. It can be used with existing ERP systems and on-demand supply chain management applications through ColdTrak Connect, giving a complete solution for cold chain processes. Fleet management solutions that aid in improving food safety are evolving at a rapid pace. Past efforts focused on monitoring cargo during transport, but observers say many companies are now turning their interest toward helping drivers operate in the safest way possible. With this in mind, a number of new technologies have been introduced to improve driver safety. For instance, technology is available that monitors the driver’s behavior throughout a trip, including hard braking history, the distance maintained with a car in front, lane departure warnings and roll stability among others. Companies such as San Diego-based Omnitracs help back office operations and safety teams more effectively utilize these types of technologies, determine which ones make sense for them and which are the most effective without causing distractions. “The level of detail in which companies can monitor and track a shipment today is extremely high,” says Monica Wyly, director of product management for Omnitracs. Wyly says features such as Critical Event Recording enable companies to provide feedback and coach their drivers, all of which can go a long way toward improving safety records. “The ability to pull up satellite images of the section of road, for instance, and compare topography against a driver’s actions such as an over braking instance, provides a level of information previously not available.” To finally get a stronghold on food safety, observers say retailers will need to start taking a proactive versus a reactionary approach to their food safety management. Diversey Consulting’s Das says this means taking a closer look at using a hygienic design strategy when designing and building food retail facilities. Given the employee turnover rates, she says a greater emphasis on education and training at a lower time investment is also necessary. One approach is to supplement initial food safety training with ongoing quarterly refresher training that focuses on specific high-risk food safety areas such as cooler/freezer storage and management, food safety in deli/bakery, cooking and storing high-risk foods. Retailers might consider looking into the many new developments in cleaning validation technologies, she adds. “In the past few years there have been many interesting innovations in this area and it might be worth re-evaluating the current validation methods to incorporate some of those innovations in the everyday routine of the food retail store,” she says. Continual training and awareness is a step toward future resolution of many food safety and facility issues says Globe’s Gallagher. “These lines should intersect to become the key elements to food safety,” he says. Above all, Gallagher advises not to cut corners for staff training because it will only cost more in the long run. “Take the time and spend the money to train new employees and re-train existing employees,” says Gallagher. A ray of light The presence of hazardous materials such as propane, compressed natural gas (CNG) and dispensed fuels among others, is prevalent in many grocery store and warehouse environments. When delivering, dispensing and storing these hazardous materials, the use of intrinsically safe lighting products should be a safety-first best practice, say observers. Russell Hoppe, marketing manager for Bayco Products based in Wylie, Texas, says just as LED lighting has grown in popularity within the store design, LED lighting for employee safety is also becoming more common. “In a typical flashlight, bulbs are often unreliable, offer low performance and the cost of replacement batteries, in addition to theft and disposal, create a whole other set of issues,” says Hoppe. Thus, Bayco identified an area to enhance employee safety. Bayco officials created the Nightstick, a line of handheld, lightweight, reliable LED lighting products to address these concerns. Nightstick offers Dual-Light technology that incorporates an LED flashlight and LED floodlight into one product and allows the user to turn on both lights simultaneously in dual-light mode. “Not only can you see at a distance, you can see what is in your immediate area as well,” says Hoppe. Nightstick offers earth-magnets in specific lighting models so the user can safely work hands-free. It also provides the user greater versatility and a vastly increased level of safety, he says. Using a CREE LED rated at 130 lumens, in addition to a high-efficiency deep parabolic reflector, the sharp-focused flashlight beam reaches a distance of nearly 600 feet. According to Hoppe, the body-mounted CREE LED floodlight, which uses no reflector, is rated at 110 lumens, giving the light it casts a wide and even unfocused pattern, which is perfect for close-up illumination.