Despite the best efforts of manufacturing companies, problems with product quality can and do occur that can potentially have both reputation and financial consequences. Batch monitoring and recording can help to ensure that, in the event of a problem, the affected products can be quickly identified, and measures taken to pinpoint and rectify the root cause. Neville Child global product line specialist, Recording and Control, ABB, explains how this can be achieved.

In every industry, there is a level of traceability either required by legislation or to protect the manufacturer should a legal defence be required. Batch control is common across many industries. In the aircraft industry the recording and control of every element in the creation of an aircraft is long established. It is perhaps surprising therefore that this level of detailed analysis was not brought into legislation in the confectionary and wider food industry until relatively recently.

The most common items on the list of product recalls include food items and toys. The European Union’s General Food Law Regulation (EC 178/2002) was a big contributor to the rise in recalls when it was first introduced because anyone who identifies a potential safety issue with food now has a responsibility to act immediately. Prior to the introduction of this piece of legislation, companies were able to make judgement calls about whether they needed to withdraw a product on safety grounds, whereas now legislation states that if they have a concern, they are forced to act.

The scale of the Food and Beverage industry in Europe is significant, it is Europe’s leading manufacturing sector in terms of its turnover, but it is estimated that half of this turnover is generated by SMEs1. The EU Food industry continues to strive to meet or exceed those legislative guidelines. Allergens in food products triggering fatal consequences caused the food standards agency to launch a consultation on food traceability. Confectionary may include many of the 14 allergens that must be labelled on food packaging, such as gluten, soy, egg, milk, nuts, peanuts, or sesame. The legislation for food safety applies equally to small batch producers as large manufacturers of food and drink, which can be present a challenge in terms of human resource and time required to implement such systems.

Setting standards

Consumer-facing industries are not the only ones affected by the wider trend towards greater reliance on standards. Industries serving other businesses are also increasingly expected to operate within externally recognised standards. In fact, the importance of complying with industrial standards in general has never been greater.

It is not enough for companies simply to obey the rules; they must also be seen to abide by the regulation. Any failure to demonstrate compliance with their particular industry’s accepted standards of best practice will leave companies with a lot of explaining to do if something goes wrong – whether they’re defending themselves in a criminal court or trying to persuade their insurance companies to cover the costs of defending against civil litigation brought by disgruntled customers.

Effective monitoring and data gathering are the best defence, regardless of whether you are freezing chickens to meet Chilled Food Association guidelines or cooking up aeroplane parts to meet the Nadcap AMS2750E standard for heat treatment.

It is imperative to both large producers and small batch producers to have the same control systems in place. For small batch food producers, they may not be aware of the low-cost entry price of the various Recording and Control devices that can help to satisfy these requirements.

Batch-by-batch traceability

The difficulty that many large and small batch producers find is that a lot of industrial recorders are only set up to monitor and record data at a particular point in the production process, such as a specific process vessel or piece of machinery.

But what many companies really need is a batch monitoring approach that can collect and process data from multiple stages of production as a given batch of product makes its way through the plant or factory. If the batch later comes under suspicion for some reason, this batch-wise monitoring approach should make it far easier for manufacturers to extract the evidence they need to show that they have followed best practice procedures from start to finish.

Furthermore, if something does go wrong, batch-by-batch monitoring makes it easier to trace and recall batches of affected product quickly and efficiently.

The potential cost implication of recall can be enormous. The most well publicised food product recall of 2019 was for hummus. The recall was made by Zorba Delicacies, based in Wales. They supply several supermarket own brands including Aldi, Morrisons, Lidl, Asda and Sainsbury. However, the recall extended to products sold by John Lewis, Iceland, Booker, Spar, Safeway and The Real Deli. It was reported that 56 product lines were affected in total. Zorba Delicacies confirmed that a batch of ingredients supplied by a third party was the cause of its recall of houmous products from various major retailers, amid salmonella fears 2. Britain’s consume 12,000 tonnes of houmous a year and the recall caused product shortages and price increases on the product across the UK.

It is possible that more effective batch monitoring at the affected companies could have confined the extensive product recalls to those products that were actually contaminated, rather than forcing companies to recall millions of “suspect” products, some of which may not have been affected.