SafetyChain Blog

SafetyChain is proud to have been named a top OEE software product by Capterra, a free online service that helps organizations find the right software for their operations. 

Adopting the right technology and instituting new and innovative ways for process optimization in manufacturing is crucial to staying competitive in the manufacturing industry. For example, a leading frozen foods company with nine plants - used SafetyChain QMS to try and determine the cause of a faulty lot of frozen dumplings. In two hours, they were able to use technology to diagnose the root cause, make the appropriate adjustments, and save hundreds of thousands of dollars.

We’ll go over the right steps to take to ensure you’re using the right resources for your process optimization, potential challenges to process optimization, and guidance for optimizing your processes.

During a FSMA presentation covering updates to PFAS regulations, the Director of Food Safety at the Acheson Group, Dr. Brent Kobielush, shared updates to PFAS regulations in an effort to equip attendees with the information needed to operate their companies proactively and feel prepared for the future.

It is no secret that visibility is essential to optimizing your manufacturing operations. With incoming materials and outgoing orders all tracked and managed from a spreadsheet or paper forms, it is near impossible to understand what is truly happening on your plant floor, let alone where you should focus your improvement efforts. 

In our recent webinar, You Can’t Fix What You Can’t See: Three Ways to Shine the Light on Optimizing Operations, participants were asked if they could express how their operation is performing without leaving their chairs. Not surprisingly, 35% said no, and that’s not uncommon. In the competitive world of manufacturing, process manufacturers are faced with the challenge to gain true visibility into their plant operations and optimize with the resources available — this is not an easy task. However, with the right approach and tools, it is possible.

The majority of the attendees at our Demystifying Industry 4.0 webinar agreed the world isn’t slowing down and won’t stop changing. A major factor in that change is the speed at which technology evolves. Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) are major parts of the ongoing shifts happening in manufacturing and production.

The majority of attendees (60%) to the first of our three-part series on avoiding risk in manufacturing confessed they are constantly in firefighting mode within their organizations. This means they are reacting to problems as they occur, rather than proactively finding ways to prevent these issues from happening.

This came as no surprise to presenters, David Hicks and Tim Nickerson of TBM, who have decades of combined experience in consulting for lean operations and supply chain management.

Quality and safety standards for the food and beverage manufacturing industry have been shifting as the world experienced unprecedented supply chain disruptions through the pandemic. From this disruption, the FDA and other regulatory bodies have adapted some compliance requirements to ensure a steady supply of safe and quality food while developing new regulations. It is crucial that manufacturers understand, prepare for, and implement policies to comply with these changing standards.

Most organizations understand the value of performing internal audits. The objective of auditing is to gain insights into your processes, help you maintain conformance, mitigate risks, and improve your operational excellence.

However, there are best practices you can incorporate into your audits to make them more effective, insightful, and useful to increase the likelihood of continual improvement.

Each food and beverage facility is different, with its own unique set of food safety and customer requirements to satisfy. With that said, there are many key performance indicators (KPIs) shared across the industry which are used to measure success.