New QA Structure by Elton Turner, QA Director, Contract Packaging
There are many contract packaging companies throughout the US, just like Crest Foods. What sets us apart from all the rest are our values. These values can best be defined by our Culture and commitment to Quality. As a contract packager, customers like Karlin Foods and General Mills entrust the image, wholesomeness, and safety of their products to us. This trust, along with the fact that we operate in a regulated industry that’s always changing means we must constantly challenge ourselves to stay ahead. One of the ways we’ve decided to “stay ahead” is through implementation of a New QA Structure. (The Product Specification & Lab Systems Support will not be changing.) By now, many of you have heard of some new things happening within Quality Assurance and recently you’ve likely seen some new faces out on the production floor! The new QA team members you’ve seen are a result of our New QA Structure that began on December 1st. The intent of our new QA Structure includes: • Realigning our QA resources to better support operations where Line Techs are assigned to fewer lines to cover so they can do more frequent checks. This sets us up for higher levels of support, teamwork, and quicker reso- lution when we encounter quality issues on the lines. • Quality Technicians will work closer with operators and mechanics to stay ahead of issues, which will make us better over time by reducing the frequency of quality defects. • The long-term goal and expected results being improved “first-pass” quality with less resulting rework which is good for our customers and in turn, good for Crest! • Over time, we should be able to shift our focus away from the management of daily issues and into more strate- gic efforts like goal setting and process improvements. So what does our New QA Structure look like? Examples include: • Line weighers within operations have joined the QA team • Overall QA support for the lines nearly doubled from one Quality Technician for every 10 lines to one Quality Technician for about every 5 lines. • Quality Supervisors (Lori Tally & David Hendricksen) have now become Quality Engineers. They will lead our QA team with increased focus on driving QA incidents resulting in quality holds to understanding of root cause. • A single QA supervisor (Jessica Fair) will support the our inspection team by working a “split-shift” daily sched- ule, covering both A and B shifts We’re very excited about the recent changes in QA and sincerely look forward to working together with all of you to make Crest Foods a continuing success! More to come and thanks! Getting to Know
QA Audit & Inspection :
Kathy Conant & Joanne Waters
12 Crest Ink January, February & March 2015
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