Quality
Quality relates to each product and put simply, is a principle that encourages excellence in everything in a business. Just as important as attaining quality, is the maintenance of quality. Quality is consistent. You can produce a product that is excellent once by chance. True quality is about consistently maintaining excellence.
Quality management
You ensure quality by putting in systems that monitor your whole-of-business methods.
Having a food safety program in place is the first step to quality. Food safety programs use quality systems to ensure safety by defining goals, measuring, monitoring, checking, evaluating and modifying in a systematic cycle.
Australia has a reputation for supplying clean and natural products with low chemical residues. Quality and safety are paramount with strict safety standards regulated and enforced along the value chain.
Good quality is also good business. By ensuring a consistent, quality experience, up-to-date food safety and OHS&W requirements, production and distribution processes are more efficient, and can increase size and predictability of profits.
Key action list for quality:
- Write down what quality means to you.
- Bring together your thoughts. For example, you may have defined quality as tasty, fresh and always on time, with only 5% waste in production.
- Put in place systems to measure what is being achieved.
- Document your regular checks.
- Evaluate your measures on a regular basis using customer feedback.
- Modify where required.
- Implement any changes.
- Continue this process to continually improve.
ISO 9000
ISO 9000 is the internationally recognised standard for quality management systems. This is a quality management standard that if attained means the business is meeting:
- the customer's quality requirements, and
- applicable regulatory requirements, while aiming to
- enhance customer satisfaction, and
- achieve continual improvement of its performance in pursuit of these objectives.
Once again, many businesses implement the ISO 9000 standards but don’t necessarily go through the certification process straight away. They use the principles to assist them in running a quality business while taking time to assess the needs of their customers and whether certification will add value for them.
Whether you seek formal certification or not, the documentation of systems and standards is very important. Documentation gives you a basis for continuous improvement. It also facilitates the management of your business by other people as you grow, or when you sell. Apart from these benefits, it might be very helpful in establishing your practice if there is ever a problem with your products that results in legal action.
Quality assurance examples
Many industries have developed their own definition and measure of quality in their industry. For example, Food Barossa has defined what quality means to them and has a rigorous certification process to back this up. Only those businesses that meet these standards can use the Food Barossa logo.
Nationally the beef, lamb and sheepmeat industries have an eating quality program, Meat Standards Australia™ (MSA). It labels beef, lamb and sheepmeat with a guaranteed grade and recommended cooking method to identify eating quality according to consumer perceptions.
Similarly the Australian Egg Corporation has established Egg Corp Assured (ECA), a national egg quality assurance program. The Egg Corp Assured quality assurance program addresses issues including food safety, biosecurity, animal welfare, egg labelling and environmental sustainability. These programs must be audited by a registered third party auditor. Consumers can look to ECA as a mark of a quality product produced under strict guidelines.
How has the SA Food Centre helped others?
There are many examples of assistance offered to South Australian food businesses.
Flyers
La Casa del Formaggio
Fergusons Australia
Who can I contact?
The SA Food Centre can help with quality issues for your business.
- Page last modified: July 27, 2010, 12:52 pm
- Welcome URL is http://www.safoodcentre.com.au/
- This page: http://www.safoodcentre.com.au/processing_and_manufacturing/quality
