What’s Worse Than Downtime on the Production Line?
Few things are. It can be absolutely heartbreaking having downtime due to technical faults. Faults that may not even be able to solve swiftly. Or how about downtime when having to upgrade or replace technology, because they are no longer suited for the market demand or changes in the supply chain. Its just…
Well, there is one thing, that is even worse. So bad in fact that it often causes major downtime and technology replacements as a result. And that is… having to recall products due to bad hygiene.
Standards are high in the Food Production Industry, no doubt. But still, it happens every so often, that a company have to recall an entire batch. Most often due to ingredients gone bad in which case it may be outside the company to fix – it still shows Quality Control didn’t kick in and caught the problem in time before products was packed, stacked and shipped.
But sometimes hygiene control is the cause of the problem. In those cases, it is usually because the production line has many manual operations in the process. Humans. Having people in near contact with the product is a risk hygiene-wise. And hygiene has been the center of attention for years now.
If a company gets labelled as ‘dirty’ or people get sick eating the food, that’s a label no brand can easily recover from. People remember that, talk about it and share their experiences. Bad hygiene in the production line must be one of the worst things that can happen to a production plant – if not the worst.
Still, many companies have been running for years without any problems at all having people working in the packaging zone. If it isn’t broken, why fix it?
Photo Explained
Some products can seem too complex to automatically put in trays. But technology have come far in this field. Today its possible to do faster, more precisely without damage to the product and cleaner than any human could.
