Loose Items Register

I do understand the purpose & objective of maintaining Loose Items Register as required by GFSI standards.

We are in the process of introducing this system but concerned about the consequences on what happens if we could not account for missing pen / knife at the end of the day? Are we expected unpack all the cartons packed for the day to search for the missing item. And recall all stocks produced & sent out for the day?

Can anyone who implemented such programs for Loose Items Register, elaborate on what do you have in your written procedure, on how to deal with it .

I can understand the seriousness & importance of this system when you are producing ready to eat products like Milk powder / confectionary snacks / ice creams etc.  But I do not understand the importance & value of it while we are packing processed fish that is not ready to eat but to be cooked before consumption.

Let us say if a pen had fallen into fish box at the time of packing, then the customer is obviously going to notice it when every fish fillet is individually handled to remove them from the box. 

I request the members for your comments & valuable insights, from your own experiences, on how best we can implement this program, without worrying about the dreadful situation of havng to unpack all the finished product boxes for a missing item.

Thanks in advance

Sridhar 

I’m also curious in the current follow-up for the missing in action tools.

This should start searching for the tool to define if it could possible be in the product.

But what if it is really missing and possible in the product or process? Therefore I’m following this topic.

Usually certain registrations are used as evidence to show that a certain contamination claim can’t be from a specific source.

I’m not on the same page by the less importance of the hazard due to the fact that hasn’t impact on the products that aren’t ready to eat. You can’t rely on the people that are using you’re product to be that specifically checking for absence of foreign objects. What level of checks can you expect. Do they handle the product per piece or do they drop the product in a bigger vessel.

Not to mention the micro biological risk that certain tools can bring to the product.

Warm regards

I would risk assess depending on the missing item, and the product, taking into account factors such as metal detection etc.

I wouldn't necessarily assume a customer will find something. And if they do, they won't be too pleased. I receieved a 8 inch knife once inside a box of pork belly!

 

 without worrying about the dreadful situation of havng to unpack all the finished product boxes for a missing item.

I'd also add that a situation of a customer finding some broken knife in their product, or eating it, or doing a recall would also be a dreadful situation.

The company I work for has metal detectors, and everything that can come loose (pens, clipboards, knives) is metal-detectable. So we do not do a lot about loose item registration.

Same as Zanorias I once found a large knife in a box of vegetables. Our supplier did not have metal detectors. They had a system that every piece of equipment should be accounted for at the end of the day. If they did not find it they had to sift through everything until they found it. Which usually meant they had to go though the trash (employee's would often throw them in the bins by accident). This employee wasn't so happy about going through the trash again and hid the fact that the knive was missing. Needles to say he does not work there anymore :doh:

We are in the process of introducing this system but concerned about the consequences on what happens if we could not account for missing pen / knife at the end of the day? Are we expected unpack all the cartons packed for the day to search for the missing item. And recall all stocks produced & sent out for the day?

Can anyone who implemented such programs for Loose Items Register, elaborate on what do you have in your written procedure, on how to deal with it .

I can understand the seriousness & importance of this system when you are producing ready to eat products like Milk powder / confectionary snacks / ice creams etc.  But I do not understand the importance & value of it while we are packing processed fish that is not ready to eat but to be cooked before consumption.

Let us say if a pen had fallen into fish box at the time of packing, then the customer is obviously going to notice it when every fish fillet is individually handled to remove them from the box. 

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There is nothing more special as a customer to a supplier to kind a foreign object (pen, knife, hairclip, etc.) in the product that I have purchased.  

As a customer (me) that has found all sorts of interesting things in the food products that we purchase - my first thought is, this is one out-of-control company. 

Some may think no big thing - as a customer I think contamination, fiflth, chemicals from the ink of a pen, what else is in the product, a hairclip with hair attached to it in a can of apricots tells me the company is completely out of control, does not care, etc.

If I was missing a pen or knife at the end of the day I'd be ripping the place apart, plus all the product boxes, running the x-ray system etc.

That pen or knife might be something that your customer finds readily, but allowing it to happen many times speaks volumes of the company that it came from, especially if it happens more than once.

I found a toe-nail clipper with a piece of someone's toe nail in a plastic bucket of flounder filets 40 years ago - I got a new supplier the next day.

It's serious.

A few points here.

First of all, where possible loose items should be metal detectable and ideally in one piece or as small a number of parts as possible.

Where you have lost an item, you will have to perform a risk assessment to determine the likelihood of it entering the product so for example if you have lost a knife and you have a fully functional metal detector (with all the correct procedures and failsafes in place) the likelihood of it being in the product and not detected is probably going to be low. However if it is a plastic item or if you don't have metal detection in place, that is going to be a problem.

In addition, you should ensure that you have a workplace culture in place where employees are willing to come forward and admit they lost or broke an item without fear of reprisals. That way, the problem can be identified very quickly and it is much easier to contain. Where I do have a problem is where employees don't come forward when such incidents occur and try to cover it up.

Also, you can never assume that the customer is going to find a foreign body in the product. As an example, we buy in blocks of beef and mince them as part of our process; we had a number of instances where knives or hooks were buried within the block and only when it jammed the mincer we found it. After a number of such instances which sometimes resulted in costly repairs (which we charged back to the supplier) and the resulting foreign body risk, we ended up having to put our own metal detection in to inspect the beef prior to mincing