“It’s a powerful tool that takes a lot of the uncertainty out of the food production industry by offering reliable, easy-to-use, colour-coded tracking for large numbers of suppliers,” a European spokesperson for DVN told FoodProductionDaily.com. “EasyRisk Manager has multi-applications across industry sectors, too, but we are pleased with the clear benefits to the food production industry for supplier management.”
Launched at annual Food Safety Summit, Washington, DC, the web tool creates and manages risk profiles of suppliers. Colour-coding illustrates potential risk levels, records incidents and automatically notifies suppliers when remedial action is required, said the company.
Risks and actions
The system can be tailored to users’ needs for company-wide views of the current risk picture and categorized according to organisational department, stakeholders, systems or other criteria. It also presents statistics focusing on the development of risks and actions over time
Kathy Woburn, DNV director of food safety solutions said: “We’re taking a critical business process and making it much more efficient. Big food companies have hundreds, even thousands of individual suppliers. Most will tell you that assessing and tracking those suppliers, from a quality standpoint, is extremely difficult.”
EasyRisk Manager incorporates self assessment risk profiles and allows all supplier management information to be kept in one place. Its cross-referencing and performance review capabilities, allows for transparency of safety audits and clear comparative documentation, added Woburn.
Compliance programme
“EasyRisk Manager allows food companies to be more proactive in their supplier management. It makes things easier, but it’s more than convenience. This kind of information is essential to an organisation’s strategic compliance programme,” said Woburn.