Lactalis Canada is one of the largest food group companies in Canada, with its 17 operations centres and more than 3500 employees across the country. The Montreal dairy milk plant produces well-known brands such as Béatrice® et Lactancia®.
Both the Canadian and American food industries ensure high standards of quality and safety. Among other norms, Lactalis Canada complies with the HACCP accreditation, the FSSC 22000 certification standards, preventive control plans (PCP) and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency audits (CFIA). As the Chief Operations Manager Steve Guernon explains, the company must keep track of cleaning frequencies and the corrective actions of noncompliances.
In this article, we’ll discover the Lactalis team’s testimonials as they deployed Tervene to simplify and connect daily operations, audits and the management of corrective actions.
Equipping The Frontline Workers and Management Teams to Simplify Their Daily Operations Control.
“The biggest challenge was to ensure follow-up and monitoring. We knew where we were going. I needed a tool to help me with this. We were able to include all operations into the system: health and safety points, quality points, follow-up discussions in meetings, tiered-meetings structure, Gemba Walks …”
- Steve Guernon, Chief Operations Manager at Lactalis Canada
Preventive Health & Safety Management
Tervene provides tools for Lactalis to facilitate their safety inspections, while also helping managers to handle incidents, monitor preventive and corrective actions and transfer information to the right meetings (supervision, management, direction, EHS committee). Moreover, Lactalis keeps traces of recurrent issues to improve the control of safety standards. Learn more about safety management and Tervene in this blog post: Preventive Safety Process Supported by Tervene.
Health and safety is the first aspect we’ve reinforced.
– Steve Guernon, Chief Operations Manager
As an EHS coordinator, Tervene helps me follow up on incidents and accidents.
– Caroline Leduc, Senior Supervisor and EHS Coordinator
Audits and Inspections Structure
✓ So far, more than 500 audits and inspections have been performed with Tervene.
Operating within a highly regulated industry, Lactalis’s employees, supervisors, and managers must perform audits that follow a standard frequency and keep traces on corrective actions. The current audits performed with Tervene mainly focus on safety processes, quality and human resources.
- Monthly safety inspections of all departments
- Quality inspections of best industrial practices relating to safety and operations
- Theoretical and practical assessment of cleaning and sanitation systems
- Audits of emergency equipment
- Inspections of buildings
- Inspections of work areas
- Inspections of machinery and cleaning processes
Unionized employees perform one third of the audits. We involve employees all the time.
– Steve Guernon, Chief Operations Manager
We’ve also saved paper by digitizing our audits.
– Sarah Colliez, Quality Manager
Management of Noncompliances and Corrective Actions
The employees and managers at Lactalis use the task management tool, action plans and various meetings to follow up on corrective actions. In brief, the managers analyze reports from the documented issues and noncompliances identified with Gemba walks and audits. Then, they assign actions, add discussion points to meetings and set follow-ups. Steve Gernon explains: “We needed to facilitate the follow-ups, and that’s what Tervene did.”
Tervene allows me to better organize and monitor our issues. Nothing is forgotten! It’s also an excellent way to communicate and share information.
– Sarah Colliez, Quality Manager
Meeting Structure and Team Communication
Lactalis supports its daily, weekly and monthly meetings structure with Tervene. All the managers collaborate by adding discussion points to the meeting minutes with comments, photos and issues from audits, gemba walks or tasks. The structure of meetings simplifies the communication cascade and standardizes the transfer of information in shift handovers. Lactalis digitized:
- Daily operational meetings
- Weekly directors’ committee
- Monthly EHS Committee
- Managers’ meeting
- 1-on-1 meetings between directors and managers
- Quality meetings
Next Steps for Lactalis Canada
Proactive Gemba Walks Structure
A better documentation of issues on the work floor accelerates how supervisors can share information to the daily morning meetings, allowing managers to keep data for analysis purposes. Therefore, Steve Guernon plans to equip supervisors to document all the issues identified during the proactive Gemba Walks.
Digital Procedures
Steve Guernon and the Quality Director, Sarah Colliez, want to stay up-to-date with the workers’ reality and the new best practices of the industry. Hence, they plan to integrate Lactalis’s quality system into Tervene by digitizing the work and assessment procedures with video and photo formats.
About Tervene
Our connected manager platform empowers frontline teams and top management to reach operational excellence with stronger daily control, collaboration, problem-solving and improvement processes.
Manufacturers, operation leaders and many SMBs digitized their management practices with our help: Gemba walks, daily checks, audits, inspections, operational meetings, digital procedures, improvement management and much more.
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