The impact of managing pre-requisite programs on the quality of product at a food processing plant: a case of Rainbow Chicken Limited.

Abstract

South African food manufacturers are faced with various food safety challenges during the processing stages due to knowledge gap in terms of understanding the importance of managing the prerequisite programmes in a food processing facility. It is often not clear as to who is responsible between leadership and ordinary employees for ensuring that food safety is a high priority in a particular process. Leadership thinks that employees involved in a process are responsible for food safety, some individuals think the quality assurance department should take responsibility, and employees on the ground think that business leaders should be held liable for the safety of the product. This study is aimed at unpacking and making clear what needs to be done to ensure that product food safety is consistently maintained during the processing, and that the roles are clear as to who needs to ensure that all the prerequisite programmes are effectively managed. The qualitative research method is selected for this study to collect and analyse nonnumerical information to understand the opinions, concepts, and experiences. The population selected for this study are heads of departments and their direct reports, assistants, and general workers from the RCL foods P2 processing site. They represent the views from the different functions such as the quality assurance department, the engineering department, and the processing department. The sample size for this research is 25 employee participants coming from each function and represents all the levels within the business structure. Research interviews are used for this study simply because they are an affordable, efficient, and a fast way of collecting a large amount of information from participants. This research adopts a thematic data analysis because it provides flexibility between the theories instead of limiting a researcher to one theory. The study findings reveal that respondents claim that if the prerequisite programmes are not managed properly, the quality of the products will suffer which will lead to customers’ dissatisfaction and the products will be unsafe for consumption. Respondents claim that the product will be of poor quality and too contaminated if the prerequisite programmes are not managed properly. Furthermore, respondents claim that a bad brand reputation and loss of customers and revenue will be the result of compromised quality of product due to failure to manage prerequisite programmes. The study concludes that if prerequisite programmes are not well followed they can have a severe impact on the safety of the products and the business finances, therefore everyone within the business structures should take full responsibility in terms of managing PRPs.