15 replies to this topic

[smart17]

Hi all, I hope you are well and safe. In my manufacture site the last few weeks, we had some incidents which look like malicious contamination from our staff. These incidents are getting more frequent  and we would to decrease these incidents or even catching the person who does this as causing big problem to our production. Any suggestions or recommendations please ? 

 

 

[Marloes]

Hi,

 

This is a very difficult challenge. I am afraid there is no 1 good answer.

It is very important to figure out why these incidents are happening. Are there any changes made which made employee's unhappy (could be long in the making). Is there are reasons why your colleague's are acting out?

 

I would advise to be weary at pointing fingers and starting a ''witch hunt'' for the culprit. This could only damage your company culture and cost you lots and lots of energy.

If it is allowed you can install camera's. You don't even need to plug them in. Just having them deters bad behaviour.

 

I have in the past had an incident where someone was sending strange and incriminating letters to anyone they could think of (local authorities, clients etc.). We invited all them for an audit and, of course   , they found nothing. We figured it was an employee that we recently fired for bad behaviour. We had a talk with our (stil employed) employee's to adres to issue honestly. That we were shocked and hurt by these actions. We later also installed a suggestion box in hopes to hear complaints early (which was never used by anyone, but still a nice have).

 

There are also people specialized in these kinds of cases. They can tell you what actions you do and do not take. They can also help you file (insurance) claims. The rough translation would be ''corporate detective''. But I don't think that is what it is called in English  .

[Evans X.]

Greetings,

 

Do you have CCTV installed in your facility? That's one way to start, with focus on the areas you think the problem is more likely to occur and checking also for off hours "visitations" if you have cameras or electronic door pads with registers.

You can also examine the production dates along with the occurances and the key areas more likely to induce the tampering to narrow down a bit the personnel involved, if you have a lot of personnel. See if you can spot a relation between the same individuals/shifts and the problematic productions.

Also try to discern behavioral changes in relation to recent (maybe) changes, like shift hour increases or salary cut downs or tension between staff/staff-management, filter out displeasure or recent outburst events for religious/social/orientation/economical issues. Watch out for personnel frequenting areas that it shouldn't normally be at.

Also what's the source of the contamination? Biological, physical, chemical, allergen? Who can possibly have access to the contaminant if you have figured out what it is, how and where can it be introduced in the production?

Increase the "walks" in the production, especially in key areas, utilizing trusted personnel.

Don't count out even the possibility of a management fallout, if there are more than one owners (people are indeed crazy when they get vengeful...).

Build your case and come up with proof and the solution.

 

Unfortunately there are quite a lot of reasons and ways to do it. Your chance lies in actively taking measures (food defense) like monitoring/electonic locks etc and investigating all posibilities of how, where and by whom it may occur. Until resolved you have to stay super-vigilant in your end product inspections/analyses with the possibility of not even releasing the product from your werehouse.

 

Hope it helps and your matter gets resolved soon.

Edited by Evans X., 12 April 2021 - 11:00 AM.

[Charles.C]

Hi all ,  

 

I hope you are well and safe. 

In my manufacture site  the last few weeks , we had some incidents which look like malicious contamination from our staff . 

These incidents are getting more frequent  and we would to decrease these incidents or even catching the person who does this as causing big problem to our production. 

Any suggestions or recommendations please ? 

 

So what kind of malicious incidents ?

[smart17]

Hi Charles , 

 

thank you for the answer. 

Adjusting values onto the machines . 

contaminate our production circulation and switch off some parts of the  machines 

[Scampi]

Buy a gopro camera 400 pounds--cheaper than CCTV and secure it (them) out of normal line of sight. After a couple of weeks you'll know what's going on

 

 

what makes you think this is an employee and NOT mechanical failure?

[Charles.C]

Hi Charles , 

 

thank you for the answer. 

Adjusting values onto the machines . 

contaminate our production circulation and switch off some parts of the  machines 

 

Options available, eg tamperproofing, might relate to the specific activities but in the absence of details, cameras presumably represent the easiest solution. One limitation IMEX is that avoiding the latter's deliberate disablement can be difficult.

[TimG]

Hello Smart,

I have, unfortunately, had to perform an investigation into what I would call a negligent repeat minor contamination (we also treated it as possible maliciousness because we thought, who could be this stupid?).

First thing you can do is communicate this to your plant personnel and help them understand the seriousness of the situation. You can approach it as asking them to be more vigilant about helping you curtail what you've been finding. If you don't think that is strong enough, you can maybe scare them a bit. I'm not sure about the law in the UK, but here stateside intentional contamination is an arrest worthy chargeable offense. 

 

Some steps that may or may not help:

 

• Trend current findings to determine if a specific shift can be pinpointed
• Trend current findings to determine if there is a repeat area of the process that can be pinpointed
  • Screen up to X point always clean, visual check at Y point shows the contamination (or whatever similar gateways you have)
• Review all data to against your process and try to determine if this could possibly be incompetence instead of malicious 

Obviously if it's malicious, it will be harder to track. This is because the person is most likely NOT trying to get caught, and will pick different areas to contaminate. While not a smoking gun, repeat issues from same shift but from different areas, might make me lean toward thinking it's malicious.

 

In my investigation, it was a pretty open and closed case. I found what part of the process to watch, viewed the bagger doing his job, and found it was extremely easy for him to 'lose' his sample cup (food grade, shatter proof, etc. and never made it past our later screener). He'd basically go into the lab and get a sample cup every time he thought about taking the sample, but we never tracked how many cups he took nor controlled them in any way.

In my case, some re-training and a new policy requiring a signature by the bagger on the supersack tag was enforced. Sample cups stopped appearing on my screens at my dry site.

[jenw91]

Buy a gopro camera 400 pounds--cheaper than CCTV and secure it (them) out of normal line of sight. After a couple of weeks you'll know what's going on

 

 

what makes you think this is an employee and NOT mechanical failure?

If in the UK, I believe you need to inform staff that there is CCTV in operation.

But I do think CCTV is valuable. Working in a poultry slaughterhouse, CCTV is mandatory in some areas. We added it to other, non mandatory areas and it makes observation more valuable because people will act how they should when you are in the room personally. They tend to become a bit complacent/forgetful of the CCTV cameras. We have also managed to prove/disprove a number of issues with it.

[Leila Burin]

Hello,

On my opinion, when talking about food defense, the key is to put into the malicious shoes worker and try to see with their perspective. Understand how, when and what to deliberate contaminate. Then, your mitigation measures (such as CCTV, increase inspections, etc), will go in the correct direction. Otherwise, the scope is as wide as human imagination…..Take in mind that this person, if you suspect that is a worker, has not the same objective of the terrorism people, so the impact of the contamination will not be on people´s health, but to the Company reputation, so, on that direction, put an eye on physical contaminants also.

 

hope this helps :)

 

leila

[SQFconsultant]

Can anyone make adjustmentscon your machines?

Is there no "authorized" list of personnel that are allowed to do so.

I assume you do not have a lock out system availabe that only allows adjustment from authorized.

[SQFconsultant]

Can anyone make adjustmentscon your machines?

Is there no "authorized" list of personnel that are allowed to do so.

I assume you do not have a lock out system availabe that only allows adjustment from authorized.

[jenw91]

Hi Charles , 

 

thank you for the answer. 

Adjusting values onto the machines . 

contaminate our production circulation and switch off some parts of the  machines 

The other thing to contemplate is whether there are any staff members that are not trained or do not speak good english being allowed to carry out operations under the radar and therefore doing things incorrectly. 

Is it possible for there to be a glitch on the machines?

 

What sort of process and equipment is there?

[Ryan M.]

If I were you I would hold a general meeting to inform everyone what is going on.  Your best bet is to have other employees identify the person(s) involved as you can't watch a bunch of CCTV footage or always be on the floor.  MOST employees will sympathize and understand the seriousness of the issue.

 

You will likely get some people who will call out individuals after the meeting who are "suspect" and can be interviewed.

 

In addition, I would host smaller meetings as well since people are more comfortable coming to the front on these issues when they are in smaller group settings.  If possible, interview people individually.

 

The first step is AWARENESS.  Most companies do not spend enough time on this with their staff.

[Charles.C]

Failure of Food Safety Culture ?

[Karenconstable]

Ryan and Marloes have already mentioned the importance of talking to your line workers about this.

 

I would add that when talking to the workers you could, in addition, promise them access to a temporary anonymous whistle-blower system so that if anyone on the line has any information about who is doing the malicious activities, they can let you know anonymously.  Mostly other workers will want to do the right thing, but might not want to 'get involved'. 

 

A letter box in a private part of the facility where someone could drop a note, or a contact form on a webpage would do the trick.  Promise complete privacy and tell them it will only be there for a week so that anyone with information will come forward sooner rather than later.