Today's technology has driven a push toward maximizing efficiency across every industry. Nearly 70% of all U.S. manufacturing plants have adopted lean manufacturing practices to improve efficiency — and food manufacturing is no exception.
But in this pursuit of productivity, some organizations are leaving themselves more exposed to food safety threats, prioritizing speed over quality and oversight.
When lean principles are implemented incorrectly or incompletely, streamlined production can increase food safety risk by making it harder to catch slip-ups in day-to-day operations. Thanks to reductions in manpower, inventory, and downtime, organizations rush themselves into food safety incidents — canceling out the benefits they might gain from better efficiency.
So are efficiency and food safety mutually exclusive? Not necessarily. Follow along as we break down how your team can successfully and proactively transition to lean operations without sacrificing food safety and quality.
What is lean manufacturing?
Lean manufacturing is a practice used in various industries — including the food and beverage industry — in which businesses attempt to reduce waste through a combination of various methods, including:
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Boosting operational efficiency
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Simplifying supply chain complexity
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Optimizing production schedules
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Investing in automated technologies
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Reducing staff
By implementing some or all of these updates based on business needs, food manufacturers can simultaneously reduce costs and improve output while keeping up with demand.
That said, the efficiency initiatives that come with moving to lean operations can also create gaps in oversight, cleaning and sanitation, verification activities, and trained human judgment. If left unaddressed, these gaps could result in food safety incidents. Staying aware of potential blind spots as you shift to leaner operations can help you better prevent them and protect your operations from related risks.
How Lean Manufacturing Can Create Food Safety Blind Spots
Cost savings and process optimization may seem like a guaranteed positive for your organization, but consider what you may be sacrificing in exchange for these newfound benefits if you don’t implement them while maintaining food safety best practices. Cutting back on essential procedures like sanitation, quality control, and supply chain management can lead to costly mistakes that could negate (or even surpass) efficiency gains.
Neglecting Quality Checks in Exchange for Speed
Quality control is an essential process, but your team might dedicate less attention to it in pursuit of greater efficiency under a leaner operational framework. That could mean they spend less time inspecting raw materials, testing products, or conducting preventive maintenance like equipment calibration and storage environment maintenance. These oversights could expose your inventory to dangerous bacterial or allergenic contamination.
Reduced Sanitation Time
Moving to lean manufacturing could mean streamlining sanitation processes to save time — particularly during line changeovers. But while sanitizing production lines can be time-consuming, it's one of the most essential protocols for maintaining food safety in your production process.
Neglecting sanitation can lead to serious food safety failures, especially when cleaning lines that have come in contact with allergens, resulting in recalls, regulatory consequences, and legal action.
Overreliance on Automation
Investing in automation is another helpful way to streamline operations and reduce employee workloads. However, some businesses go wrong by overrelying on these technological solutions, rather than trusting their trained employees.
Automations are still prone to failures or inaccuracies that can go unnoticed. This is why finding the balance between food safety technology and human oversight is essential for successful lean manufacturing.
High Vulnerability to Supply Chain Disruptions
One common practice in lean manufacturing is employing a just-in-time inventory system, in which companies receive inventory as close as possible to when they need it to reduce storage costs and the risk of unwanted inventory. The issue with these systems is that manufacturers become more vulnerable to supply chain disruptions.
In the event your supplier is affected by inventory shortages, logistical issues, or pricing concerns, your team has two options: lose production time or find a new supplier as soon as possible. If you choose to find supplies elsewhere, you may not have time to do the due diligence required to ensure your new supplier's food safety standards meet your expectations. This lack of oversight could lead to preventable food safety risks.
Damage to Employee Morale and Food Safety Culture
Layoffs for the sake of efficiency will undoubtedly affect morale among your team. Employees may feel less motivated to remain at your workplace if they see you making significant staffing cuts; research shows that after layoffs, 58% of remaining employees are more likely to begin searching for a new job, even if their role was unaffected. This lack of stability can lead to higher employee turnover, meaning you’ll lose valuable institutional knowledge and investment that is essential to quality food safety.
Your business decisions also shape what your employees prioritize. By trading food safety for efficiency, your food safety culture could suffer. Layoffs can cause a nearly 17% drop in company confidence as well as a decline in engagement. Employees may feel it's less important to report potential risks, impeding their role as the eyes and ears of your food safety strategy.
Procedural Shortcuts
When your team's priority is speed, "good enough" may become the new normal for food safety. Employees may fall short of compliant personal hygiene practices, for instance, skipping or not thoroughly washing their hands in an effort to get back to the line and stay productive. These shortcuts might seem small at first, but they can pose a significant risk of cross-contamination or allergen cross-contact that could lead to food safety incidents.
Avoiding Food Safety Issues While Maintaining Lean Operations
These food safety issues may seem inevitable when cutting back to gain efficiency, but many challenges associated with lean operations are avoidable with the proper foresight. Consider incorporating these strategies in your lean transition plan to reduce the risk of food safety failures.
Build strong and diverse supplier partnerships
Using a just-in-time inventory system is an effective way to trim down your storage costs. But to successfully navigate this tricky method, you need to ensure you have reliable partnerships — as well as backup suppliers for unavoidable disruptions. Both current and backup suppliers should be properly vetted through supplier audits and aligned with your food safety expectations, so you don’t experience a dip in quality in the event of a supplier change.
Invest in your team
If you choose to cut back on staffing as part of your lean manufacturing strategy, it's important to show your remaining employees that you are still committed to their success. From investing in food safety training to prioritizing health and wellness benefits, properly supporting your staff through a lean transition can improve employee retention, food safety efforts, and future recruitment.
Even something as simple as prioritizing your management team's visibility, approachability, and honesty about company decisions can make employees 72% less likely to lose productivity post-layoffs and 65% less likely to report a dip in product quality.
Focus on standardization
As you reduce both downtime and staff, procedural clarity becomes pivotal to food safety success. Establish clear standard operating procedures (SOPs) that your team is effectively trained on and understands. Gather feedback from your staff on their retention and comfort level with these SOPs, as operational misunderstandings can lead to food safety failures.
Prioritize food safety over efficiency when necessary
Efficiency isn't everything, and your leadership team must know when to slow down for the sake of food safety. For example, leaving extra time to sanitize production lines can save you from significant downtime caused by a recall down the road. The same principle goes for hygiene, preventive maintenance, and other proactive measures that may require greater diligence in the present to prevent major shutdowns later.
Bring in outside expertise
Sometimes going lean requires a little extra help. Regardless of whether you feel comfortable transitioning to lean manufacturing on your own, having access to third-party expertise can help you identify opportunities for improvement or potential vulnerabilities.
Through an objective, experienced lens, third-party experts can review your lean manufacturing strategy and pinpoint where you may need extra help maintaining food safety — and offer suggestions on how to do so.
Leveraging Expert Help to Balance Efficiency and Food Safety
Lean manufacturing may pose higher food safety risks, but proper preparation and a commitment to excellence will help you overcome some of the common challenges associated with this change and keep your food supply safe. Ready to make your move? Don't do it alone.
Before you begin your transition to a lean manufacturing model, work with an expert consultant from AIB International to review your plan and provide actionable recommendations for maintaining compliance as you streamline. With perspective on everything from system design to workforce development, an outside expert could be your secret weapon to effectively optimizing operations.
