Hi everyone [if anyone is still checking this blog- and if you are leave a shout out on a comment please- I would just like to know] how are things? I have had a busy past few weeks. Here is how they played out…
The week of August 18th I spent in a Food Safety and Sanitation course at Ecolab in St Paul. Sounds dull doesn’t it? Actually it was very informative and gave me a lot of ideas for improving programs around my plant. I also got to meet a few other people in the industry as there were 38 students in the class. It was sort of strange being one of about three students that were local to the area. I really would have enjoyed myself even more if I was from out of town. On the first day we were taken for a tour of St Paul at lunchtime, and then spent about a hour and a half after class at a free bar, free eats ice breaker session. I found out the next day they had even more free bar time at the hotel the out of towners were staying at, I wish I had been from out of town. Hard to drink my fill and then drive home, so I didn’t. While overall the class was very good, there were times when I found myself having a hard time paying attention. And I may have figured out why it took me such a long time to gain my college degree. When I am in class and cannot concentrate my eye tends to wander to the hotties in the class. And there were at least four within my line of sight during this class. It is a wonder I gained any information at all. Considering my hormone levels during my college career, it is a wonder I ever got my degree. So a week of sanitation and daydreaming, and then I got to eat at a new restaurant on Friday afternoon , POP, before going back to the plant for a three hour meeting on SQF.
Last week was audit week at the plant. We are in process of getting our site ready to implement a new quality standard called SQF and will be having a pre certification audit in October. Since we are one of only four sites that our parent company owns that will try for certification this year, our parent company sent out their SQF expert to get an idea of where we are in the process as well as give us guidance. So the SQF expert shows up on Monday, and while I am working with her I get a call to let me know the FDA has shown up at the plant!
It turns out they wanted to test their biosecurity plan, what with the whole RNC being in town soon, and picked us as a nearby milk producer. So I spent the day with two FDA officers going over our processes, pulling four product samples and tracing them back to the specific invoices for the raw materials used to make them. On the up side, they told me the FDA was looking to fill six positions in Minneapolis and if I was interested I should apply. They seemed to think I was competent, which is a good thing when dealing with the feds. So that was Monday, on Tuesday our third party auditor came by to conduct our yearly surprise audit. I won’t bore you with details, but we ended up with a 95.9% score which is the highest the plant has ever gotten! Wednesday was back to SQF boot camp, and Thursday I got to host the six other QA managers from my company for an SQF planning discussion. It went about as well as you could expect with a group of radically different backgrounds and agendas. I hate decision by committee. Friday I spent in recovery, trying to get my normal work done. Tomorrow I’ll post about the fun stuff Brian and I have been up to, but right now I need to get to bed!
