Did the QA manager change into a QA issue manager?

QA manager or QA issue manager

QA manager or QA issuemanager?: In recent months I have again been giving plenty of HACCP training in food companies. This is a nice way to work Food Safety Culture within companies and training courses can be used to validate the HACCP system as well.

The HACCP Team

What strikes me is that most of the food companies do not know what the HACCP study looks like, where they can find it and who is on the HACCP team. In the ideal situation, these training courses are given by the HACCP team. Because of this everyone knows who is in the HACCP team and the team knows also directly to what extent the HACCP approach is institutionalized within the company.

QA Manager & Food Safety Culture

Due to the combination of increased requirements due to quality standards and legislation and understaffing in the QA department, in in many cases the QA or QESH manager has become an issue manager and has no time to train. This does not benefit the Food Safety Culture within a company.

The current QA-department

Because the email box of the QA department is full with customer questions, questionnaires, product adjustments and the follow-up of, for example, MRL violations, it is not possible to work structurally on the implementation and improvement of the QA function within the company. This creates even more issues and creates a negative spiral that can lead to even lower staffing levels in the QA department.

iMIS Food

With iMIS Food this trend can be stopped. By offering a good QA infrastructure and processes, various QA activities can be performed in other departments. The understaffed QA department becomes more of a QA coach to facilitate the company’s deal with Food Safety itself.

Shortage QA personnel

With the current shortage of QA personnel and the increasing regulatory burden, this digital transformation of the QA function is, in my opinion, a great opportunity to properly manage Food Safety as a company.

A nice article to tackle the negative spiral by Elizabeth Doty: https://thesystemsthinker.com/the-upward-spiral-bootstrapping-systemic-change/