Total Quality Management

The Role of Total Quality Management
An effective sanitation program is a segment of total quality management (TQM), which must be applied to all aspects of the operations within an organization.

Total quality management applies the “right first time” approach. The most critical aspect of TQM is food safety. Thus sanitation is an important segment of TQM.

The successful implementation of TQM requires that management and production workers be motivated to improve product acceptability.

Furthermore, all involved must understand the TQM concept and possess skills to maker the program successful.

Quality Assurance for Effective Sanitation
Quality is the degree of acceptability. Component characteristics of quality are both measurable and controllable.

A sanitation Quality Assurance program can achieve the following goals:

• Identify raw material suppliers that provide a consistent and wholesome product
• Make possible stricter sanitary procedures in processing to achieve a safer product, within given tolerances
• Segregate raw materials on the basis of microbial quality to allow the greatest value at the lowest price.
  

By tradition, the food industry has applied quality assurance principles to ensure effective sanitation practices, among them, inspection of the production area and equipment for cleanliness.

If evidence of poor cleanup is reported, necessary action is taken to correct the problem.

More sophisticated operations frequently incorporate use of a daily sanitation survey with appropriate checks and forms. Visual inspection should include more than a superficial examination, because a film buildup that can harbor spoilage and food poisoning microorganisms can occur on equipment.
Total Quality Management

Food, Quality, Value and Consumer

Food, Quality, Value and Consumer
Conceptually, “quality” and “value” lie at the interface between the consumers mind processes and the object of the external world. Both are concerned with a consumer and an object and with interaction taking place between them.

Food value is slanted more towards the consumer and food quality towards the food, but there is an overlap. This interface, although critical is only one of several that are relevant to an understanding of consumer behavior in the area of food quality.

“Value” and the associated concept of “value”, and “consumer behavior” draw on several academic disciplines, both in the social and the natural sciences, for their theoretical underpinnings; yet there is no unified view of food quality and the consumer.

In fact, there is often a distinct lack of understanding, which tends to prevent effective communication between food professionals raised in the different academic traditions, and which can lead to difficulties in the business environment.

Food companies must understand the mental process that will cause consumers to develop perception of the finished products. Such perceptions engage with consumers’ motivational systems and therefore directly affect choices and other food related behavior.

As for marketing and communication strategies for novel foods and technologies, it is crucial that proper account is taken of the beliefs and attitudes of both consumers and the wider community.

Consumers are the final link of food supply chains, i.e., they are the end users. This does not mean that, in each case, the food shopper is the person who will consumes the food in the sense of eating it. For example, foods may be bought for other family or household members and as gifts.
Food, Quality, Value and Consumer