Dispatches from GFSC 2016 in Berlin

Diversey Care makes food safety management digital

By Joseph James Whitworth

- Last updated on GMT

Dr Ilham Kadri spoke to FQN at the Global Food Safety Conference in Berlin
Dr Ilham Kadri spoke to FQN at the Global Food Safety Conference in Berlin

Related tags Food safety Hygiene

Diversey Care, a division of Sealed Air, has launched a digital food safety management platform to help firms boost safety and quality of operations. 

The firm claims IntelliConsult drives consistency in food operations, ensures regulatory compliance, improves operational efficiency and strengthens food safety culture by allowing different data streams to be in one platform and deliver multi-layered, interactive reporting.

By collecting data, monitoring and measuring the critical control points in daily operations, the firm said food business operators gain actionable insights to improve training and operations, reduce risk and deliver a better customer experience.

It includes: Food Safety and Temperature Monitoring, Hand Hygiene Compliance, Auditing tools, Training, In-Store Traceability, Laboratory Analysis and a Library.

Gaining actionable insights

Dr Ilham Kadri,​ president of the Diversey Care Division of Sealed Air, said IntelliConsult helps customers to manage food safety monitoring and is more than just doing checks.

“It is having corrective actions and linking it to e-training. It is about temperature monitoring so you have a direct connection to the cloud between the temperature you are taking in your freezers and online and you can have it 24/7,” ​she told FoodQualityNews at the GFSI conference in Berlin.

Kadri described the On-Site or In-Store food traceability as ‘unique’.

“Where you have an ingredient entering into a store or a food processing plant it has a barcode in general but nobody monitors or follows the food inside the facility in a way that you know from where it’s coming and if you cut a cheese into four pieces, nobody will follow them four pieces and link them to the original piece.

“So our In-Store traceability helps the client to monitor and trace the food chain inside the store.”

Historically, food safety was looked at as compliance so do we comply - it was a checklist for auditing purposes and inspection, said Kadri.

“I was shocked when I started in this industry and I started visiting food retailers and restaurants to see piles of paper and archives just to ensure if there is an audit or inspection we can read through the data, in a world which is becoming more digitalized,” ​she said.

“So it is about the transparency, capturing the data, rather than having a pile of papers, because nobody is going to look at what happened in September last year unless they are requested to do that. Branching those data and turning big data into smart data, bringing it back to the store manager or the VP of quality, so it is useful and then we can take actions on our problems.”

Diversey Care launched the Internet of Clean platform last year, which connects machines, dispensers, sensors, beacons, and other devices to help companies protect brands, improve customer satisfaction, save water and energy, improve labor productivity and training.

Products in the Internet of Clean were Intellitrail, IntelliFlow, SmartView, TempTrip and Intellibot robotic scrubbers and vacuums.

iCertainty, a provider of digital HACCP and other food safety items, is a partner and technology provider for three modules of the IntelliConsult platform: Food safety monitoring, Auditing and In-store Traceability.

Industry trends

Kadri said she was ‘extremely surprised’ when joining the industry three years ago that there is very little automation and digitalization of information.

“When I worked in my lab in the automotive industry, aerospace and water treatment industry, digital is part of the game. Digital is part of your life, it is in our homes but yet we didn’t bring it to our industry,” ​she said.

“So we started building the Internet of Clean, we trademarked that, and it is about connecting machines and minds. So whenever we have a cleaning device in a facility we connect those cleaning devices with a central hub and the quality manager, the production manager, the general manager etc and we provide them with the right smart information according to their own needs.”

Kadri said a major reason of food poisoning is a lack of hand hygiene.

“So it goes back to the basics of hygiene and cleaning. I came to this industry three years ago and I was interested by understanding the value of cleanliness. In a way, clean is difficult to value as it is invisible and how do you value something invisible, so we take it sometimes for granted,” ​she said.

“But then you realise actually it is not about cleaning floors, it is about preventing food poisoning and preventing food scandals, because when you have a food poisoning it does harm and impacts your guests, your revenues and your brands.    

“It used to be clean the floors and clean the kitchen and then that’s fine. I do believe it is about a culture and how you train your people, how you push the safety culture through your organisation, in an industry which has a high turnover of human capital.

“So how you re-train the new employees, the temp employees and the millennials, who are our new employees, who train differently it is not like the classroom, it is on the spot, whatever they want, whatever language, they can have it.”

Kadri, who founded the Hygeia Network in 2014, said industry has a ‘fundamental mission’ to restore the pride in the job. The non-profit association aims to restore pride in the cleaning industry.

“I think there is little pride in cleaning jobs, there are some people who are, for me, the invisible heroes but I don’t see that everywhere,” ​she said.

“There are 800 million cleaners around the world, 70% are illiterate or don’t speak the native language, and they see the cleaning job as the first entry into the job era and then they will move on. There is a high turnover of human capital, almost 70% according to the statistics.

“What we are trying to do is build a curriculum in the cleaning industry, build the pride. Almost 70% are women and that can be up to 90% in the house-keeping, hospitality sectors. Hygieia was the goddess in the Greek time of hygiene, cleaning and health so the Greek’s got it right, they linked cleaning with health which we are trying to do now by building this awareness.”

Related topics Food Safety & Quality

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