MARCO ISLAND, FL — Things don’t always go as planned in the baking industry. No one knows that better than Karl Thorson, global sanitation and food safety manager for General Mills. But he says there are ways to mitigate possible risk that costs time and money — including early management, minimizing food safety risk and identifying efficient cleaning methods.
Thorson elaborated on these ways to decrease risk during the BEMA Convention: Workforce Edition, a digital program that complements the in-person event being held from Wednesday to Friday this week in Marco Island, FL. He introduced a concept in his presentation today called an overall risk assessment (ORA), which helps companies achieve these goals and keep their operation going.
An ORA is a checklist that identifies key leaders in a project and their responsibilities. It features questions to get project managers and operators thinking about what they need to do and when they need to do it, and how different departments can work together to execute everything seamlessly — especially when it comes to food safety and sanitation.
Thorson, who has a combined 25 years of experience in plants and corporate, food safety and quality, sanitation and operations with GMI, said there’s a certain sweet spot between minimizing risk and maximizing efficiency when it comes to an ORA and sanitation processes. Extra costs and wasted time can clog up an operation, and his goal was to bring awareness of an ORA as a tool, how to use it and how to promote it as a method of interaction between cross-functional teams. Since sanitation isn’t a value-added factor, Thorson said it’s critical to have a workflow that is as smooth as possible.
“It takes a village to execute a project, and that’s not just from a food safety and sanitation standpoint,” Thorson said. “Let’s do it right the first time and minimize the impact on our businesses.”
One of the ways to minimize risk is to determine an appropriate cleaning method for each piece of machinery in your line. Thorson asked the audience to think about why you clean something and how you do it. Some factors he said were important to consider includes allergen profiles, new formulas with new impacts and thinking about dry vs. wet cleaning methods.
“It takes a village to execute a project, and that’s not just from a food safety and sanitation standpoint,” Thorson said. “Let’s do it right the first time and minimize the impact on our businesses.”
“The challenges around sanitation become more and more as we go forward and consumers keep asking for new and unique things,” Thorson said. “If you want to make an allergen-free claim or gluten-free claim or kosher or organic, all of these present challenges and cleaning standards that we’ve got to meet.”
When it comes to cleaning method, Thorson advised to think smart. Matching cleaning methods with equipment design can make cleaning faster and easier. He also advised to steer clear of water if possible. His “war on water” comes from the amount of risk it brings. It can be an enemy from many standpoints including equipment reliability, standing water, possible slips and falls, and possible leaks and condensation which can cause recalls.
Another risk factor he mentioned was product contamination. Containment of physical hazards like wastewater or swarf, small metal shavings from the machining process, can get into food, causing potential recalls. It’s all about control of the foreign materials, whether that’s through the use of magnets, sticky mats or isolation of spaces or machinery that can cause contamination.
“A lot of thought needs to go into this,” Thorson said. “It isn’t a cheap process, but we need to budget for it right.”
Thorson also emphasized how less is more, especially when it comes to labor and time it takes to clean your equipment. The ORA allows for budgeting of labor and consideration of all labor factors including preventative maintenance, changeover, specialty skills for cleaning equipment and reassembling a line. A big part of that is by keeping it simple when it comes to machinery — a more complex design means more time needs to be spent cleaning it, which can add up cost-wise. He said to focus on keeping your labor minutes per unit operation as low as possible.
“Addressing that upfront is important and planning for how much labor and complex skills you need to manage that system,” Thorson said. “Could I come up with a simpler option that requires less labor?”
He knows that an ORA won’t give everyone all the answers, but he hopes that it can lead teams in the right direction to not only minimize food safety risks, but risk across the board.
“I think that this has huge implications,” Thorson said. “We really want to see this out there and used in the industry.”
View the overall risk assessment tool here:Overall-Risk-Assessment-Tool (1)