Hey everyone I hope you\u2019re having a great week, Marty here with Warehouse and Operations as a Career. It\u2019s been busy around here, I just finished up a 4 part series on Leadership with quite possibly the strongest, brightest and most motivated group of young Leads and Supervisors I\u2019ve had the privilege to speak with to date. They\u2019ve got their plans put together and I\u2019m betting each of them are going to reach their Career goals, I\u2019m betting a lot sooner than they realize! So now I\u2019ll be packing for a quick trip to Philadelphia but I wanted to take a few minutes and talk a little Op\u2019s to wind down a bit! So what are we going to talk about today? Looking through my notes and emails I see a couple of questions about 3rd party audits. One gentleman asks \u201chow can these people come in and change up everything we\u2019re doing\u201d and we had a new Lead asking \u201cis this audit as important as it seems\u201d?
\nBoth of those questions are really good ones and I think we can answer them both by maybe looking at what a 3rd party Warehouse Audit is and what it\u2019s really for. Both of these gentlemen are in the distribution field, foodservice as it turns out, and yes, these audits are a big deal and if their suggesting any changes with our procedures or processes it\u2019s a good thing and I highly recommend listening to them and implementing any changes they may suggest! Our Company may hire a 3rd party auditor to walk through our policies to ensure that all City, State and federal regulations are being followed, especially its supporting documentation. You know, on the outside it looks like all we\u2019re doing is moving freight in and out, but in reality there can be a lot of documentation that goes along with us unloading that trailer that\u2019s just pulled into door 18 there at the dock. Someone has probably already checked and documented the set point on the refer unit if it\u2019s a chilled or frozen load and either the Lumper or Receiver will take an inside temperature of the air & product when he or she opens the door to start working the load. Those are pretty important steps, as you can imagine, since their dealing with fresh and frozen products. The regulations regarding Food Safety are there for our protections as consumers! In this case the receiver may have to catch or record the products weight, maybe the country of origin even for HACCP reasons. It\u2019ll be their job to protect against any cross contamination like chicken on top of beef or chemicals anywhere near the food products. HACCP stands for Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points and it is a big deal.
\nThe FDA, or Food & Drug Administration at fda.gov tells us HACCP is a management system in which food safety is addressed through the analysis and control of biological, chemical, and physical hazards from raw material production, procurement and handling, to manufacturing, distribution and consumption of the finished product. The program is quite detailed and through, it\u2019s a very defined regulation. I\u2019m veering off subject again but I\u2019ll put something together and we\u2019ll talk about the how, why and when of HACCP another time, so where were we. Oh yeah, so now that the products on the docks we may have to document that it does not set there over a specified amount of time, again that\u2019s whatever is written in our procedure sheets. Those procedure sheets will state where in the warehouse and at what temperature we\u2019ll be storing it and maybe even how long it will set there until it ships out to the end users. Wither you know it or not everything\u2019s documented, that\u2019s why our company utilizes Job Descriptions and why our SOP\u2019s or standard operational procedures are written for every task and how items move through the warehouse and on to transportation, ending up with the end user! Our sanitation department\u2019s work off of printed Master Cleaning Schedules too, it\u2019ll be broken down into thinks that are attended to Daily, and what we clean weekly,