At BioZyme®, one of our corporate goals is to produce products that meet or exceed our customers’ needs and wants. We call it safe, accurate product. This goal has always been very important to me, as I believe our end customer is the animal, and animals have always been my heart throb. My mother could tell you numerous stories about how many wild animals I tried to “save” and how many dogs I brought home that “found” me.
The responsibility of quality is to ensure all products are free from defects, the process reduces waste, and the product meets the customers’ expectations before it leaves the manufacturing facility. The pursuit of quality must be everyone’s responsibility at each stage of the process.
This pursuit at BioZyme includes the following:
- Reliable products – From a business perspective, consumers favor products that are reliable.
- Safe products – Perhaps the most critical element is that we must ensure our products are safe to use.
- Compliance – There are many rules and regulations we must adhere to, and compliance is a key issue of quality to prevent delays in production and avoid fines.
- Consistency – All products must meet the same standard of excellence.
- Waste reduction – We lower costs when material resources are conserved and used wisely in the production process.
- Minimizing risk – A rigorous QC process identifies root causes quickly when there is a problem.
- Continuous improvement – Quality is about always improving the process to create a better product.
Once you have these standards defined and implemented, then you must decide how you will know they are working. At BioZyme we wanted to be very specific about our safe, accurate product goal. That started with defining safety and accuracy.
Those definitions are outlined here:
- Safety refers to all factors that impact the health and well-being of the manufacturing employees and the products they manufacture.
- Accuracy is the degree of conformance to the known standard when it comes to the quality and performance of a finished product.
Next, we worked hard to define our versions of each.
BioZyme Safe
- Produced under safe, clean conditions.
- Free of harmful, foreign substances.
BioZyme Accurate
- Labeled appropriately, legibly and truthfully.
- Consistent in look where look is defined as color, smell and particle size.
- Consistently palatable.
And finally, in true Lisa style, we outlined how we would measure if it was really happening by defining these metrics:
- 0 worker accidents
- 0 animal deaths
- 0 pounds of off-spec product
- 100% of product produced is without a product integrity customer concern.
- 100% of finished product tested matches its tag.
- 100% of product hits parameters set for the color spectrometer and particle size analyzer.
- 100% of product contains formula tested amount of flavor.
After defining, outlining and documenting all the above we began upgrading all that we do at BioZyme to ensure we walk the talk.
Below is a list of what we have done to date:
- Installed an Industrial Dehumidifier
- Perform Monthly Leg Camera Scoping
- Installed a Feed Cleaner Just Before Bagging
- Installed More Magnets, a Magnet Drawer & Metal Detection
- Implemented AI Camera Pictures of Every Bag with Alarms
- Ensured FIFO Monitoring
- Implemented an Employee Safety Program
- Added Sampling & Testing of All Inbound Ingredients
- Added Sampling & Testing of a Statistically Significant Amount of Finished Product
- Ensured Full Team is PCQI Trained
- A PCQI is an individual who has successfully completed adequate training to implement a food safety plan. A PCQI manages important aspects of the food safety program and ensures that preventive controls are effective and proper records are maintained.
- Implemented 100% Automated Checklist Use with Alarms when a NO is Clicked
- Ensure Dust Control Content Analysis
- Implementation of Automation in All Processes Except Drug Hand-adds
- Employed Two Full-time Sanitation Employees at each Facility
- Track & Manage Moisture Variation in Amaferm Drying
- Implemented QC Bag Screening on First 10 Bags of Every Run
- Hired a Certified, Professional 3rd Party Pest Control Program
- A 3rd Party Audit at Each Facility for Quality Certification
- Added an Equine Safe Manufacturing Line for our Vitalize Line
Is safety and accuracy really worth all this effort?
According to the National Institutes of Health, interacting with animals has been shown to decrease levels of cortisol (a stress-related hormone) and lower blood pressure. Other studies have found that animals can reduce loneliness, increase feelings of social support and boost human mood.
Yep, it’s worth it
