Cutting costs - Absolutely YES
Cutting corners - Absolutely NO
These are two very different things and should not be confused. Any pressure from high up in the operation to cut costs without regard for the effective management of food safety is commercially short sighted and morally wrong.
Spending money on food safety without regard for the necessity and relevance of the cost is just as unacceptable.
For me the two go hand in hand. A well designed and operated food safety system will provide you with the necessary information and data to keep costs in control and reduce them with confidence. Analysis and reporting is the key to getting it right. For example I know of one of our customers who started trending micro testing results and after building up a good history were able to reduce the frequency of certain tests. (Sending samples for testing to an external certified lab can be a costly businesses) For years they were not trending data and could not see that their process was more than capable of keeping things stable. A lot of money could have been saved here. A good food safety system equals a cost effective system.
As a foot note I remember in my early employment as a quality manager visiting a customer who we supplied with plastic containers. They were big into 6 sigma systems and just loved quality assurance. In one of the meetings someone asked when talking about investment in new expensive inspection equipment "Can we really afford to spend this?".
The senior manager in the room responded immediately "Can we afford not to!!" That was the end of that particular discussion...
George
Dear George;
Food Safety Management System should applied whether in small business or huge organisations ,
and here is the role for QA Manager to reduce the cost by thinking in a hygienic ideas during the food process , for exampe , if he is working in a catering compnay and there is a lot of waste coming from the meat cutting in butchery so creat a proper waste management system for the unused parts can contribute to reduce the cost so in this case you reduce the cost and play a hygiene role by implementing a good waste system , so IMO it is objective during day and day process but will be consider acheivement at the end of the year .
in another side if you look as QA Manager to the company's process and find somthing can be implemented and contributed in cost reduction .specially , for example reducing the using of paper which is visually happened in the larg organisations which they have QA Department and need a lot of paper work daily
so it can be a good plan for redcution of using paper by finding a good solution then finally it can be a good acheivement for the QA Manager .
this is my opinion and thanks for the above opinions I took all the mentioned comments in my considration .
Regards
Hygienic
Edited by hygienic, 22 March 2013 - 04:33 AM.