Controlling risk

Alan Mutch, quality control manager, Ishida Europe, examines the role of equipment specification, planning and monitoring in minimising risk and meeting quality and performance challenges.

As the price of cocoa and other key ingredients continues to rise, the industry is faced with some familiar challenges. In order to maintain already tight profit margins, companies are being forced to consider reducing product sizes, raising prices or reformulating ingredients. The latter “can lead to negative feedback from consumers due to altering the taste and texture of products” reports consumer goods research group Euromonitor; and ultimately reputation and brand value are two vital components that should not be subject to risk.
Interestingly, the 2015 Global Risk Management Survey, recently published by risk management specialist Aon, highlights that damage to brand or reputation were ranked as equally important to food and drink manufacturers as the price of ingredients.
While it predicts that two of its top five risk factors in the sector three years from now will be commodity prices and scarcity of natural resources, and therefore largely outside of a manufacturer’s control, the remaining three key areas of damage to reputation, increasing competition and failure to innovate or meet customer needs can all be influenced and indeed managed.
In theory, by ensuring manufacturers have the most appropriate and efficient quality control systems, processes, equipment and training in place to meet their needs, they can effectively guard against reputation damage and its costly consequences, while gaining competitive advantage and meeting the changing needs of customers.

Consumer desire
In this fast paced industry, as consumer preferences evolve, their expectations rise, and as the pressure on manufacturers to remain competitive increases, amidst the pressure to innovate and to optimise performance, there is a heightened focus on quality and safety.
Following several high profile food scares and an increasing number of product recalls, consumer trust in the food supply chain has been compromised. Consumers have never been harder to please in terms of quality; across the full spectrum of products and price-points, expectations of taste, size, finish and packaging are high and consistency is key. This is especially true of products from well-known brands and those marketed to affluent, treat seeking consumers as luxury or premium offerings.
If unsatisfied, consumers are quick to complain or switch brand; brand loyalty is hard earned and brand reputations easily tarnished. Indeed, with the growth of social media, the variety of ways in which an organisation’s reputation can be undermined and the speed with which word can spread has increased significantly. Once reported online, a minor issue can rapidly evolve into a significant reputational and, by extension, commercial risk.
To continually protect consumers against substandard products, the industry has responded by tightening food safety regulations; manufacturers have been forced to comply with government regulations and industrial standards, regularly demonstrating their compliance to auditors. Wary of the damage that can be caused by a weak link in the supply chain, the use of proprietary standards by retailers is something we’ve started to see in the UK; the ability of a manufacturer to meet these enhanced requirements can be a competitive advantage.

Contamination
Even with the developments in legislation, food recalls remain a significant issue for manufacturers. Already this year we have seen several instances of batches of confectionery products being withdrawn by industry giants as a result of the detection of salmonella or the presence of foreign objects. Recalls of food products contaminated with allergens including nuts and gluten have also been hitting the headlines with alarming regularity, damaging consumer trust and causing costly reputational damage to those involved.
When you also factor in the expense of lost and wasted product, any damages you’ve had to pay to out of pocket customers, as well as the time and effort spent initiating the recall, communicating it to customers and then working to rebuild your reputation in the eyes of both retailers and the general public, it is easy to understand why manufacturers are keen to do all they can to avoid an incident.
Thankfully, the risk of recall is one that can be managed: from multi-head weighing through check weighing and x-ray inspection to end of line pick and place case packing, chocolate and confectionery producers can be proactive and take steps to minimise risks and to meet increasingly stringent quality controls. By working closely with suppliers, manufacturers can ensure that while optimising quality and safety, neither performance nor flexibility are compromised.

Monitoring
When developing and designing a line, suppliers have a vital role in helping to ensure that efficient monitoring, reporting and training processes are in place to help quickly identify issues and drive continuous improvement on the line, increasing the potential for applying lean and efficient practices without compromising quality control.
By training staff to make full use of the advanced data management systems used to automate monitoring and reporting processes, manufacturers can quickly identify anomalies, taking corrective action further down the line, enhancing end of line efficiency. They can also benefit from the ability to provide an irrefutable audit trail. Several manufacturers are effectively using these data management systems to proactively demonstrate their diligence. They are now able to provide their customers with a quality control report immediately after production has finished, the document reaching the customer ahead of the product itself. With tracking requirements set to become more demanding, such levels of efficiency and transparency could soon become the norm.
When it comes to equipment specification, surface is an important aspect to consider; in many cases it is essential that rounded surfaces, sloped corners and an absence of sharp recesses are specified to ensure optimum throughput, minimise contamination risk and allow for easy cleaning and maintenance, minimising downtime. For example when producing chewing gum, the correct surface will minimise the risk of a build up of sugar dust contaminating equipment and damaging sensors.
Conveyors should be specified to provide safe travel and transitions, particularly when a product’s surface coatings are delicate. Take a chocolate bar with a branded indent on the underside, for example – if the movement of the conveyor isn’t smooth and the product is not stable and caused to bounce around, the legibility of the brand name or consistency of the overall pattern may be affected.

Flexibility
With confectionery and chocolate production, there is no one size fits all solution to packing challenges. This is why original equipment manufacturers regularly work closely with manufacturers to develop bespoke solutions. In addition to the usual problems of high speed packing, the packing of chocolate and confectionery products may also need to incorporate factors such as resistance to abrasion and corrosion by sugar coatings, the handling of sticky jelly based products or the capacity for mix configurations for multipacks.
Flexibility is paramount in this area, with packing lines often handling a variety of products, pack sizes and configurations. Retailer demands for value added multipacks and a rising demand for smaller packs and resealable pack options to cater for portion conscious consumers mean that today, in the most extreme of cases, more than 30 different packaging outputs could be required for a single product.
When planning a new line, it is important that companies ensure they are specifying the right machinery for the present as well as for the future. In order to have the ability to grow and to meet future requirements, it is important to plan ahead; while retailers may not currently require x-ray inspection for example, they may need it in the future.
In-line technologies, which allow manufacturers to accurately vision test, check weigh and x-ray inspect products at critical control points throughout the line, is one area where significant advances have been made. Without negatively impacting line speeds, check weighing machinery, used at key points, can ensure that pack weights consistently meet customer specifications while minimising giveaway and optimising performance.
The replacement of metal detectors with advanced x-ray inspection machines capable of precision contaminant detection at high speeds is also a regular occurrence. Such machines incorporate fully integrated automatic rejection systems, ensuring that all non-conforming packs can be removed without the need to stop or slow the production line, maximising uptime while keeping the risk of contamination by foreign objects to a minimum.
X-ray inspection is often used in conjunction with vision testing, allowing for early identification of broken or missing components or pieces of confectionery. By checking that products are assembled and packed correctly, manufactures can minimise the risk of rejection by the retailer.
A reduction in waste is often a by-product of the attention to detail required to increase quality standards. Recycling advocate WRAP recently estimated that waste could be costing some businesses in the UK confectionery sector up to four per cent of their turnover.
 
Conclusion
As new technologies emerge, enabling chocolate and confectionery manufacturers to tighten and refine their quality control processes, to optimise performance, remain competitive and meet both the current and future standards and expectations of retailers and consumers, it is imperative that manufacturers proactively engage with quality control.

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