JBS

Sherri Williams

Every day we are  challenged to  be innovative in  our jobs;whether  you are a farmer,  lawyer, doctor, or food  manufacturer. So, how does  one innovate Food Safety  in a food manufacturing  facility? Better yet, what  exactly is‘Food Safety’?  Interestingly enough,  Merriam-Webster.com does  not have a definition for Food  Safety. Here is my take on it;  Food Safety is the procedures,  processes, and verifications  used in producing a safe food  product that will not harm  the individual consuming the  product. 

Our goal, every day, is  to make a safe food product  for our consumers—which  includes our family, our  friends, our neighbors,  and ourselves. In an age  where obtaining manpower  is becoming increasingly  more difficult, what else  is there to help us with  accomplishing Food Safety  tasks? Technology, to include  artificial intelligence (AI),  may be helpful. How would  the second-largest food  company in the world use  technology to make Food  Safety better? By becoming  innovative. 

One of the most difficult  tasks we need to do every day  is to verify that Food Safety  processes and procedures are  completed the correct way.  The reason for this is simple,  we feed the world and nobody  wants to become sick from  consuming food.Typically,  human nature always wants  to ‘look good’, especially  when they know they are  being observed. As such  when employees are audited,  they will do their tasks  properly. By using cameras  and remote video auditing  (RVA) capabilities, one can  improve the behaviors of  their employees. Most often,  it is typically after the fact.  While the behavior is  changed moving  forward, productthat was previously produced  has already potentially been  affected. 

We need is a way to audit  the food safety processes and  procedures and report back  in real time, as quickly as  possible. This would allow  changes to be made that will  have a positive impact on the  safety of the products being  manufactured. Technology  has improved over the years,  and AI is emerging as a  key advancement for foodsafety. Our RVA partner  has the capabilities and  infrastructure to write  complex algorithms;which  allows AI to observe  processes and procedures in  real timethrough cameras.  This also helps monitor  the employees or machines  perform their job tasks.  The AI program can then be  ‘trained’ to decide instantly  what is correct and what is  not. Instantaneous alerts  can be sent to supervisors  on the production floor.  This allows for immediate  action to correct the  problem.

Nobody is perfect,  and no machine is perfect.  Nobody can perform their  job task perfectly every  time and no machine can  be fail proof every time.  The key to having a strong  food safety system is to  identify the times when the  imperfect things happen  and fix them in real time  to limit having affected  product continue on in the  process. At the same time,it  teaches the employees  how to handle situations  in the proper manner when  imperfect happens. We  aren’t perfect yet. We are  well underway to obtaining  the technology and AI  capabilities to assist us  with being just a little more  perfect every day.