In this week's blog, we look at some popular ways of managing the risk of recall to your business.
Can Your Business Avoid Total Recall?
This week, United Pet Group was forced to recall five different brands of popular rawhide dog chews when it was discovered that several lots contained a quaternary ammonium compound mixture used in some of it's facilities as a processing aid. The recall, which affected five different brands including the very popular Digest-eeze, has been traced back to the company’s Edwardsville, Illinois distribution facility where it was packaged and sent to a wide range of retail locations including many popular online retailers.
What happened to United Pet Group isn't, unfortunately, that uncommon an occurrence. For just the first half of 2017 alone, there have been 78 official product recalls issued by the Food and Drug Administration for reasons ranging from Listeria contamination to undeclared ingredients. Seven of those were this week alone and affected not only pet products like Digest-eeze and Loving Pets (Salmonella), but also retailers like consumer-favorite Trader Joe's (Listeria). When one looks at the affect even a small recall can have on a business and brand, it quickly becomes obvious that having processes and protocols in place can be a company’s blessing should the unthinkable become a reality.
Obviously, the best policy would be to avoid a recall altogether, but when dealing with complex manufacturing or production processes across multiple facilities and/or countries, the task of managing the individual parts can certainly become challenging. It’s too early to see the impact this recall will have upon its brand, but it does provide a chance to look at ways your business can minimize the risk of a recall. Let’s take a look at a few.
It cannot be overstated enough: although often tedious, this is by far the most important method of protecting your company from this kind of embarrassment. Having accurate knowledge of where your materials are, what condition they are in, and when materials are going to be in transit is one of the most essential contributors to maximizing efficiency and being proactive about introducing (and maintaining) processes. It can be a godsend for established businesses that have frequent interactions with multiple customers, manufacturers and suppliers or companies looking at releasing new products.
When looking at establishing procedures or standards for your company, it can often be helpful to model them to support or utilize industry code standards. One valuable resource for this is the American National Standard Institute which can provide comprehensive information about the standards within a variety of industries.
Organization also affords companies traceability of their products and when dealing with complex systems of crates, bins, lots and pallets. For some industries, such as food and beverage, traceability is not only important for internal business but also a matter of compliance with laws like the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. Having lot traceability, MSDS maintenance, and easily accessible HACCP documentation is one of the simplest methods for staying compliant and can make the process of ensuring quality across the brand easier.
When introducing new products or making changes to existing ones, it is not uncommon to receive components that do not conform to your specifications. Having the ability to trace components to their origin allows you the capacity to address quality control issues early on or to identify suppliers that produce inconsistent materials for your business. There are a variety of ways to accomplish this by leveraging software and experience, but one of the simplest is to establish and cultivate relationships with your suppliers.
Very few products today can be created from components manufactured in-house, so the use of third party suppliers is a well-established tradition in nearly every industry. Just as you would (likely) not buy a car sight-unseen, it is important to have a good understanding and relationship with your suppliers.
Although we are talking about recalls, the cultivation of these relationships have multiple benefits that reach beyond just ensuring your materials are of a suitable quality. For example, a company that produces food may want to ensure that their ingredients come from clean processing facilities or that the supplier meets kosher or organic guidelines in their production.
Even with all the planning and standardization, no system can really be considered complete until it has been tested. It is obvious that no company wants to issue a recall, but how can you know if all the work you put into place to protect your business from it works? You test it.
Many companies find great benefit in running mock recalls once or twice a year to target specific aspects of their production and distribution cycle. On the Quality Assurance & Food Safety website, Brian Honigbaum dives deeper into the how’s and why’s a company would want to run a mock recall, but the primary reason is to find holes in whatever system you have established for your company. Speed and the goal to locate 100% of a product regardless of production or distribution stage is an activity that affords a company the chance to refine processes and make improvements to its system. This will in turn ensure that high standards are not only adhered to, but maintained and refined across the landscape of your business.
The resilience of your customer base should the worst happen is dependent in very large part upon that consumer’s faith that your products are safe, that you take every available opportunity to ensure that all laws and regulations are followed, that your company is fully in control and being proactive by taking immediate action against specific lots and batches getting to the consumer.
A Software Solution
All Orders™ by NumberCruncher helps make avoiding recalls easier and managing them more efficient with a full suite of tools and features. Lot Number Tracking ensures that no batches can be created and no stock moved into or out of inventory without the correct data entered. This system of locks and gates means whether your company is consuming raw materials or ingredients with lot numbers, or even producing new batches with new expiration dates and lot assignments you will always be able to maintain full visibility of all the components of your production.
Receive lot numbers into stock, create Work Orders to deplete existing raw material numbers and move them into newly manufactured WIP or Finished Good Lot numbers. Transfers allow lot numbers to be moved around the warehouse and Ship Docs enable users to pick and choose which ones are sent to the customer and which will be invoiced to QuickBooks. Once tracking is configured, no user will be able to circumvent it always ensuring data integrity.
In the unfortunate event that a recall is needed, various tools are in place to take advantage of all existing tracking data that has been entered as lot numbers in All Orders™. The Lot Number Find Screen allows users to enter any series of lot numbers and generate a list of every document it appears on in an easy to filter Inventory Movement Detail Report that can provide logistical information such as a breakdown of precisely where each affected lot number was used.
Various Receiving, Ship Doc and Work Orders Log Reports have even more detailed breakdowns specific to each type of movement to help pin down as many details as possible for the lot numbers in questions. Production reports help find raw materials that went into the productions batch/lot numbers in the event that contaminated inferior raw material went into various batches or lots and lists all related production batches your company may need to have recalled.
Each of these reports is easily exportable to Excel, Access, CSV and PDF formats. Database experts love our SQL Server back end database for building any type of customer queries, connected Excel sheets, and custom business intelligence dashboard reporting. When combined or used in concert, these tools give users the capabilities they need to efficiently address the recall with precision and efficiency.
Contact us today for your 30 day free trial or to schedule a demo with one of our industry experts to see how All Orders™ can help you.