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Retail

Views: 2154

How to Evaluate Market Trends to Grow Your Food Business

As Henry Kissinger said, “If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.” But how do we develop an effective roadmap when the industry is in a state of transformation? During our Food Engineering webinar last week, co-host Diane Wolf and I discussed the importance of a strategic plan when preparing for your food manufacturing business’ future.

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How Does Your Food Business’ Strategic Plan Stack Up? [Downloadable Checklist]

If your roadmap is wrong, you’ll get lost. Ensuring your company’s roadmap—or strategic plan—embodies best practices is essential for your business’ future. With a three-to-five-year plan, there are several moving parts you must consider. Here, we review crucial elements your strategic plan must include, providing a downloadable checklist for you to use for your own plan.

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Views: 2908

Can Compressed Air Systems be a Source of Contamination?

Did you know that compressed air systems can be a source of contamination in your food plant? Dangerous bacteria and pathogens can be difficult to spot in your facility—especially if they are airborne. It’s a common misperception that compressed air is considered as clean as the air from the outdoor environment that surrounds your facility—NOT true. Once in the compressor, the air outside of your facility (ambient air) mixes with other elements within your compressor (i.e., corrosion, worn seals). Whatever is not caught in your filtration system is then circulated throughout your plant.

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3 Key Areas to Examine in Your Manufacturing Analysis

What’s the best way to remain competitive in the food processing industry today? A strategic plan. It equips your business with the knowledge, tools and strategies necessary to evolve and adapt to changing marketing conditions and consumer demands. In fact, we’ll be hosting a Food Engineering webinar June 23, 3 Key Elements in a Successful Strategic Plan for Growth to dive into strategic plans even further. Last week, we discussed the first step in developing a strategic plan: developing a business plan. This week, we’ll discuss step two: conducting a manufacturing analysis.

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7 Ways to Integrate Gluten-free Manufacturing Into Your Bakery Plant

Stellar recently exhibited at the American Society of Baking’s (ASB) annual BakingTech conference in Chicago. “Gluten-free” continues to be a topic on the rise among the attendees. This isn’t surprising, as more and more companies are incorporating gluten-free products into their offering arsenals. However, a common challenge for food manufacturers going gluten-free is preventing cross-contamination, whether it’s modifying existing plants or embarking on greenfield projects. Gluten-free products also require specific distribution and processing considerations that may differ from what manufacturers are used to, from mixing methods to storage. So, how do you safely integrate gluten-free manufacturing into your bakery plant?

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Are Your Doors Wasting Your Food Plant’s Energy?

Did you know a single weak link in your building envelope can have a major impact on your food plant’s energy efficiency? Take your facility’s doors and door openings. In an otherwise well-insulated and well-designed facility, an improperly designed door opening can erase a big portion of energy and utility savings. Your entire building envelope, from the windows to the walls, must be tightly sealed to achieve the utmost energy efficiency—including the doors.

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5 Keys to Forming a Comprehensive Food Plant Emergency Action Plan

Your food processing facility’s commitment to safety starts with being prepared. How do you prepared to be… prepared? With your food plant’s emergency action plan (EAP): a required Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) document that defines employer and employee actions during workplace emergencies. While emergency action plans that meet minimum requirements may include emergency information and procedures, they still may not contain enough detail to ensure the safest response to dangerous situations. Your plan must be comprehensive, eliminating all confusion and hesitancy in case of an emergency. A non-comprehensive plan — one lacking extensive instruction or failing to address each emergency — may add confusion to the situation.

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5 Tips for Automating Your Food Processing Plant

Total automation may be an ideal for most food processors, but it can be difficult to determine how to connect every system in a food plant—or if they should even be connected at all. To optimize ROI, it’s important to learn which areas of your food processing facility are best suited for automation. Below are five tips for improving your plant’s automation capabilities.

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What Food Processors Should Know About 2 New FSMA Final Rules

The FDA recently released new final Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) rules. These rules are the result of amendments made to the original proposals, based on comments and criticisms in public forums. Below are important details of two rules. You can find a full explanation of each new rule here.

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