Are you finding it challenging to manage the increasing pile of paperwork in your role as a food safety manager? 

Not only is it inefficient and time-consuming, but it can also be demotivating and take the joy out of your work. If you’re seeking a better way to handle food safety compliance, it’s time to encourage your team to shift to a paperless system. It’s crucial to present your motivation in the right way to grab your accountant’s attention. Your motivation needs to be expressed using numbers and not tears. In this eBook, we outline how you can demonstrate the cost versus benefit of moving to a digital system in a way that will impress your accountant. 

We will begin with a hypothetical case study of a small bakery that has an ISO 22000 certification system in place. The bakery supplies retailers across the Western Cape and has two production sites. The main site employs around 40 people, and a smaller satellite bakery located an hour away from the main bakery employs 10 people. 

Both bakeries operate seven days a week and produce 50 different products. They purchase about 120 raw materials from 50 suppliers. There is one food safety manager who is responsible for overseeing the food safety systems across both sites. The main bakery has two quality controllers (QCs), and the smaller bakery has one QC, all of whom report to the food safety manager.

The QCs print and issue various records to the relevant parties, conduct most of the food safety inspections, collect the records from the parties at the end of the day, and place all the records in the Food Safety manager’s in-tray for verification. 

We will approach our motivation in four steps and focus on ten main challenges related to a paper-based food safety system.