Computerized Immediate Feedback on Food Safety Quality Control and In-Process Inspections at a Food Manufacturing Plant

Food manufacturing companies are challenged with performing quality control testing and inspections so that their product is safe for consumption. If a product does not meet quality control standards during processing, the product must be quickly removed from circulation before it is packaged, selected and shipped to consumers. The accuracy of the food recall is dependent upon tracking multiple sources: ingredients from suppliers, floor-inspections, packaging, storage, truck delivery and customer sales. In the current study, during practice "mock" recalls, the host company never achieved 100% retrieval accuracy from these multiple sources and never within a 2-hour threshold. An intervention for in-process inspections was designed using handheld tablets programmed for inputting quality control testing results, along with immediate visual and audio feedback and near-immediate retrieval of quality control testing results on-demand. Subsequently, "mock" recalls resulted in 100% data retrieval accuracy capturing quality control testing results, within several minutes. Results are discussed in terms of process safety behavioral systems integrated into technology designed to improve consumer safety.