We recently sat down with one of our clients to hear more about how much easier life has gotten thanks to the efficiencies created by updated refrigeration control and monitoring equipment throughout multiple facilities.
What prompted the search for a new solution?
While evaluating all their facilities to determine opportunities to make them more efficient and productive, the company discovered a mix of older and newer equipment. While the facility functioned alright day to day, their aspirations to move into eCommerce and whole fulfillment and production required them to earn their SQF certification. This new certification, on top of their existing NSF certification, required stricter records to demonstrate their compliance. SQF is part of GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative). The FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act) law now requires compliance of Food Safety regulations.
An interesting side note, the first monitoring and measurement requirement for the food industry (Hazard Analysis Critical Control point or HACCP) was introduced in the 1960’s by NASA and Pillsbury. This program was developed to ensure food safety requirements were met for the NASA space exploration program.
A critical control point in any refrigeration system, temperature, is now managed with constant monitoring and trending.
Meeting food safety requirements is very important as most people don’t realize that over 3,000 people die in the US annually from food borne illnesses that could have been prevented. That’s 10-15 people a day!
What requirements must be in place to achieve the SQF certification?
In short, they needed a more reliable way to establish cold chain custody. This means that you need a continuous record of each minute a product spent in your facility, from the time you take delivery of that product to the moment it ships from your facility. Food Safety adheres to the most stringent requirements.
What gaps existed in their current approach that wouldn’t allow for the SQF certification?
Continuous, documented temperature verification was a must have. Their current approach involved manual audits and record keeping which wasn’t quite sufficient for an easy SQF certification.
Furthermore, the sheer size and scope of the operation compounded the complexity of the ability to maintain all of these facilities sufficiently.
Enter – KE2Therm Solutions
Having been introduced to this client through their refrigeration distributing partner, KE2Therm impressed them with their level of accuracy applied to both the precise refrigeration control, and automated monitoring and reporting. What once took a team of people many hours to monitor a huge mix of multi-zone new and old equipment, including weekend audits, became an instantaneous report with a nearly limitless series of audits from real-time monitoring.
The result of partnering with KE2Therm Solutions
The SQF Certification organization – EAGLE Food Registrations, Inc. was so impressed with the accountability established with KE2Therm’s technology that the temperature recording portion of the SQF audit was quickly accepted at the facility. Our client was able to log into KE2Therm’s dashboard and pull up the KE2 Smart Access portal, select any date range and show the auditor this beautiful graph. The auditor was so impressed by the speed and ease in order to conveniently access this accurate information. In subsequent audits, this company is able to quickly provide detailed temperature information to easily pass through this phase of the audit.
From the National Facility Manager – What impressed you about KE2Therm?
There are several factors that I continue to be impressed by:
- Easy installation in systems new or old.
- Energy savings – so much smarter than the “old way” of doing things.
- The simplicity and ease-of-use of this more sophisticated system.
- Remote monitoring is great. KE2Therm overdelivers across the board. It saves my team and I from having to make weekend audits, and also alerts us of any issues so that we can immediately respond instead of coming in to find an entire section of ruined product.
- The Dependability and tech support is by far second to none.
