Food Safety Technology: Boost ROI with Digital Transformation

An organization's culture plays a large role in successfully implementing food safety technology and digital transformation. Embracing food safety technology is a process, one that requires iterations and updates to optimize for the organization. Being open to the changes that come with this type of transformation is much easier once the potential benefits of making this change are better understood. If the organization is focused on continuous improvement, embracing food safety technology is a natural progression as the democratization of data allows for increased collaboration and real-time communication regarding collected data. This shift from a reactive approach to a proactive approach requires data that is both timely and actionable.

Benefits of Technology for Food Testing

There are many ways that a food manufacturer can benefit from adopting technology into their testing programs. Technology that allows for scheduling automation can not only eliminate a repetitive, time-consuming task but can also assist in proper testing location randomization. Another benefit of adopting technology is that it can bring a food safety program to life by automatically initiating additional testing per your food safety testing program. Not only does this enhance compliance, but it increases the ability to react to adverse testing results by making the data visible and actionable. The time normally spent coordinating, organizing, and preparing food safety testing data for reporting or audits can be greatly reduced or eliminated. This time reduction allows for further analysis of food safety data that can lead to better and more efficient production outcomes as more time is spent evaluating the data and less time is spent collecting it.

How to Improve Food Safety ROI with Food Safety Technology

Digital solutions for managing food safety data are becoming the new normal in the food production segment. There are several benefits a digital solution for testing data can deliver, including:

• Streamlining audits by reducing or eliminating audit prep time and enabling audit data to be "always on" & updated
• Improving communication of results, trends, and immediate updates, sometimes automatically, to reduce time-to-action and improve preventative performance
• Increasing efficiency and reducing risk through delivering information and trending data BEFORE issues cause operational disruption, scrap, and re-work scenarios

While all these advantages might be worth adopting technology on their own, it is the reduction of risk that inherently comes with a digital transformation and can have a major impact across the organization.

Overcoming the Challenges of Manual Processes: Embracing Digital Transformation in Food Safety

Manual processes are just that, manual. Strictly manual processes, such as hand-entering diagnostic results or preparing trend analysis reports, are difficult to scale, making any form of proactive management challenging for food manufacturers. These manual activities are inherently prone to human error and can be very time-consuming, taking attention away from more critical food safety-related activities.

The adoption of food safety technology takes commitment from the organization itself to ensure successful utilization. Introducing change into a process is not something one enters lightly, especially considering the critical nature of maintaining food safety data and records. Utilizing any digital tool requires a change in how things are done, often resulting in a simplified, repeatable process - a new process.

Stepping into a digital environment requires coordination between multiple departments and multiple business systems as this transformation will impact how information is communicated, collected, and shared inside and outside the organization. This shift to a digital landscape is spearheaded by the FDA's Blueprint for a New Era of Smarter Food Safety, paving the way for increasing expectations of a digital food safety management strategy for manufacturers.

How Digital Transformation in EMPs Drives Operational Efficiency and Business Growth

Hundreds of forward-thinking organizations have seen direct business benefits from undergoing a digital transformation of their Environmental Monitoring Program (EMP) and product testing activities. Click here to learn more on how a digital EMP can provide business ROI.

The automation of these testing programs can help reduce production delays and unplanned shutdowns while minimizing product loss or spoilage. By digitizing and automating their programs, these innovators found that they could also automatically trigger immediate and accurate execution of corrective actions and ensure conformance to their own food safety policies and protocols. This reduction in time from when an adverse test result is known to when an employee is alerted to action has proven to produce tangible business benefits to these organizations, such as:

• Reduced time-to-completion of corrective actions, generating additional production up-time
• Increased efficiency through elimination of tedious audit preparation of EMP data
• Improved collaboration and visibility through establishing a common view and understanding of food safety testing data
• Better visibility of early food safety trends and signals that can be addressed before they cause operational disruptions

To learn more about digital solutions for food safety, sign up for a demo of Neogen Analytics today!

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