IMPQI266 – Analyse and select areas for improvement in food operations

Overview 

This standard is about the skills and knowledge needed for you to analyse and select areas for improvement to support your organisation's drive to improve food operations. This is important in increasing productivity and success of manufacture, processing and supply within the food supply chain. Understanding areas for improvement are important to an improvement strategy and in a performance driven culture.

You will need to show and understand how you use organisational controls such as product specifications and Standard Operating Procedures used to maintain operational activity. You will need to show and understand how to select areas for improvement to support improvement plans and needs of the business. You will need to comply with your company policy for improvement and quality assurance procedures, take responsibility for your actions, and refer any issues outside of the limit of your authority to others.

This standard is for you if your role requires you to analyse and select work areas and/or activity for improvement in food or drink operations including manufacturing, processing, packing or supply chain activities. You may have responsibilities for aspects of organisational improvement in a team leadership or management role.

Performance criteria

You must be able to:

Prepare for analysis

  1. confirm and agree the defined scope of analysis in accordance with the improvement plan
  2. obtain information, documentation and resources necessary to support analysis in accordance with procedures

Carry out analysis to identity improvement opportunities

  1. analyse and evaluate data to determine improvement opportunities within an operational area
  2. present findings of analysis showing representative resources for the operational area to the relevant personnel
  3. specify improvement opportunities and targets in accordance with the improvement plan 5. select resources and areas for improvement in accordance with the outcomes of analysis

Select areas for improvement

  1. evaluate and provisionally select improvement opportunities on a value basis
  2. discuss and check provisional selections and their potential effect on Standard Operating Procedures with the relevant personnel
  3. communicate and present provisional selections and recommendations to the relevant personnel to agree the final selection
  4. confirm and communicate the final selection for improvement to the relevant personnel

Knowledge and understanding

You need to know and understand

  1. the organisation's improvement vision, strategy, objectives and the reasons for implementation of improvement programmes
  2. the health, safety and food hygiene requirements of the work area in which you are conducting the activity
  3. how to prepare for the process of analysis
  4. the principles of analysis
  5. the information required by the analysis
  6. how and from where/who to collect the information required to conduct the activity
  7. how to present findings graphically
  8. the process of analysis using graphical data
  9. how to communicate the information and results gained
  10. how to create and present data using bar graphs/histograms
  11. how to differentiate between lead time and cycle time
  12. how to configure the bill of materials (BOM) structure for each of the representative areas
  13. how to identify the origin/source of the resources within the chosen area
  14. how to evaluate information, in order to select the representative resources for the chosen area
  15. how to identify problems and opportunities for solving them
  16. how root cause analysis can support problem solving
  17. the extent of your own authority, and to whom you should report in the event of problems that you cannot resolve

Keywords: Food; Operations; Manufacturing; Excellence; Improvement; Organisational; Management; Analyse; Select