| Ever overdraw on your checking account or max out a credit card? It’s not hard to do if you’re not keeping track of things. How can we manage household expenses without some sort of record keeping?
Away from home, in the business sector, record keeping becomes even more important. In fact, it’s the very thing covered by HACCP Design Principle No. 7. Principle 7: Establish record keeping procedures. – This HACCP principle requires that all food manufacturing plants maintain records to show they implemented a HACCP plan, are following all principles, and the plan is working effectively. Let’s look at an example. In keeping with the directive of HACCP Design Principle 7, the engineering department of a food manufacturing plant must keep records for each design project. The design record for a new cookie forming machine would contain things like engineering calculations to determine strength requirements of machine parts and supports, as well as power requirements for the electric motor that drives the machine. This design record would also contain documentation concerning materials selected to construct the machine, as well as dimensioned mechanical drawings of the machine and its parts. These dimensioned drawings will show all physical dimensions of the machine and its constituent parts. The record would also contain test results and analysis of the results. Lastly, the design record must include a risk analysis of potential hazards that could result. Other activities include identification of CCPs, establishment of critical limits, and other factors in accordance with HACCP Design Principles 1 through 5. In other words, the record must be complete, bearing witness to an effective adherence to HACCP Design Principles 1 through 5. Principle 7 also encompasses guidelines set in place through Design Principle 6, which calls for the establishment of procedures to govern Principles 1 through 5. A complete record would contain the procedures themselves, along with any revisions. It would also contain documentation that the procedures were reviewed and approved by management along the way. Finally, of what use would records be if they were incomplete, disorganized, and outdated? A document control system not only establishes procedures, but assigns responsibilities to personnel within the department for filing design records to make sure that everything is up to snuff. This system would encompass everything, from the creation of engineering documents, to their timely entry into the record keeping system. We have now exhausted our discussion on HACCP Design Principles. We’ll switch to a new topic next time, examining some basic concepts behind the control of industrial equipment and machinery. ____________________________________________
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Posts Tagged ‘food contamination’
Food Manufacturing Challenges – HACCP Design Principle No. 6
Sunday, November 20th, 2011| My daughter’s boy friend stayed for dinner recently and was impressed with our after-dinner cleanup. He watched as each of us carried out our individual assigned tasks, my wife putting away leftovers and condiments, my daughter rinsing and stacking plates into the dishwasher, and me at the sink hand washing. To him we seemed a model of efficiency. It didn’t take long to return the kitchen to its usual state of pristine evening cleanliness. “Our kitchen is always a mess,” he complained, “probably because we’re so disorganized.”
You can imagine what would happen if a food manufacturing plant operated like a disorganized household kitchen. Although employees may know they are responsible for delivering safe products to consumers, without the right procedures in place an unsafe chaotic mess may result. To get everyone moving in the right direction we look to guidelines established in HACCP Design Principle No. 6. Principle 6: Establish procedures for ensuring the HACCP system is working as intended. – In large part this Principle acts as a report card. It follows up on the guidelines established in Principles l through 5, organizing activities into written procedures. For example, design engineers must routinely analyze important identified stages within a design project, then write procedures, that is, a step-by-step instruction guide, which encompasses them. In this way personnel involved in the design process make best use of the safeguards put in place by HACCP Design Principles 1 through 5. These steps include things like preparing design proposals, analyzing risks and hazards, creating preliminary designs, conducting design reviews, building prototype equipment and tooling, running tests, collecting test data, and analyzing test results. For each step, responsibilities of key individuals involved must be clearly defined and sequentially ordered. But writing department procedures is only part of Principle 6. Procedures are no good if they’re just thrown into a file cabinet and no one ever looks at them. What good are guidelines without a full understanding of how to use them? Training may be necessary, and management must decide what form that educational process takes to be most effective. Engineering management must verify that established procedures are adequate to the task. This typically involves taking a hard look at finished design projects and checking critical factors. Was an adequate risk analysis performed? Were sufficient critical control points established and critical limits monitored for effectiveness? Next time we’ll wrap up our discussion on HACCP Design Principles by examining No. 7. It’s the last of the Principles and it’s concerned with establishing record keeping procedures. ____________________________________________
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Food Manufacturing Challenges – HACCP Design Principle No. 2
Sunday, October 23rd, 2011| What would you do if you heard an unfamiliar sound coming from your water heater? If you’re like most people you’d make a mental note to keep an eye on it, but ignore it for the most part. Unfortunately, this less than proactive approach often results in water heater floods. As an engineer, I’m more likely than the general population to investigate the cause of the water heater’s sound and proactively seek a remedy before a real problem has a chance to develop.
The FDA’s Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) seeks to accomplish the same with regard to food production. As discussed last week with regard to HACCP Principle 1, those involved in designing food processing equipment must proactively analyze designs to identify potential food safety hazards. Now let’s see how common sense is once again employed through Principle 2, guiding design engineers to take control of situations where hazards have been identified through Principle 1. HACCP Principle 2: Identify critical control points. A critical control point (CCP) is a step in the design process at which a control can be most effectively introduced to prevent or eliminate hazards. In this context a “control” would be a design revision to eliminate hazards identified during the Principle 1 stage. We will once again use the two examples introduced in last week’s blog discussion on Principle 1. In our first example, hazard analysis revealed that food can accumulate in a food processing machine in areas where cleaning is difficult or impossible. This accumulation would eventually rot and fall into uncontaminated food passing through production lines. Design engineers would work to address this contamination hazard by identifying a CCP within the design process, that is, the best place where a preventative measure can be added to the machine setup to facilitate removal of the accumulation. At that CCP, measures can be taken to change the machine’s design. Perhaps all that is needed to correct the situation is to include easy to remove access covers. In our second example hazard analysis revealed that the metal tooling as designed for our food production machine was too fragile and would not withstand the repeated forces imposed on it by the mass production process. This design flaw presents a strong possibility that metal parts will break off and enter food on the line. To correct this situation, design engineers must once again identify the juncture within the design process at which a CCP is identified. There, a preventative measure can most effectively be introduced, enabling more robust metal to be used in the tooling. The previous two examples illustrate CCPs being utilized within the design process. CCPs can also be introduced outside the design process, as when they are identified during the course of training procedures involving the operation, cleaning, and general maintenance of equipment and production lines. And an excellent way of implementing this approach is to have design engineers collaborate with operating and maintenance staff. Working together, they are best able to identify key elements to be addressed and make note of them within written procedures. Now that we have identified some examples of CCPs within the design process, we can move on to HACCP Principle 3 and how it guides design engineers to establish critical limits for each CCP.
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Food Manufacturing Challenges – HACCP Design Principle No. 1
Sunday, October 16th, 2011| Imagine a doctor not washing his hands in between baby deliveries. Unbelievable but true, this was a widespread practice up until last century when infections, followed by death of newborns, was an all-too common occurrence in hospitals across the United States. It took an observant nurse to put two and two together after watching many physicians go from delivery room to delivery room, mother to mother, without washing their hands. Once hand washing in between deliveries was made mandatory, the incidence of infection and death in newborns plummeted.
Why wasn’t this simple and common sense solution instituted earlier? Was it ignorance, negligence, laziness, or a combination thereof that kept doctors from washing up? Whatever the root cause of this ridiculous oversight, it remains a fact of history. Common sense was finally employed, and babies’ lives saved. The same common sense is at play in the development of the FDA’s Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) policy, which was developed to ensure the safe production of commercial food products. Like the observant nurse who played watchdog to doctors’ poor hygiene practices and became the catalyst for improved hospital procedures set in place and remaining until today, HACCP policy results in a proactive strategy where hazards are identified, assessed, and then control measures developed to prevent, reduce, and eliminate potential hazards. In this article, we’ll begin to explore how engineers design food processing equipment and production lines in accordance with the seven HACCP principles. You will note that here, once again, the execution of common sense can solve many problems. Principle 1: Conduct a hazard analysis. – Those involved in designing food processing equipment and production lines must proactively analyze designs to identify potential food safety hazards. If the hazard analysis reveals contaminants are likely to find their way into food products, then preventive measures are put in place in the form of design revisions. For example, suppose a food processing machine is designed and hazard analysis reveals that food can accumulate in areas where cleaning is difficult or impossible. This accumulation will rot with time, and the bacteria-laden glop can fall onto uncontaminated food passing through production lines. As another example, a piece of metal tooling may have been designed with the intent to form food products into a certain shape, but hazard analysis reveals that the tooling is too fragile and cannot withstand the repeated forces imposed on it by the mass production process. There is a strong likelihood that small metal parts can break off and enter the food on the line. Next time we’ll move on to HACCP Principle 2 and see how design engineers control problems identified during the hazard analysis performed pursuant to Principle 1. ____________________________________________
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