Quality and inspection
Foreign bodies.
A foreign body in food is a recall and sometimes an injury. Indonesian factories vary enormously in how they control it, and the controls are visible on a walk round if you know what to look at.
Where they come from.
The raw material. Stones, soil, shell and plant debris arrive with agricultural goods and have to be removed rather than sorted around.
The building. Flaking paint, rust, glass from lights and windows, and insects. This is what a walk round reveals.
The equipment. Worn parts, broken sieves and shed plastic. A cracked sieve is one of the more common sources.
People. Jewellery, buttons, pens and hair, which is what personal item policies exist to control.
What controls should exist.
Sieves and filters on liquid and powder lines, checked and recorded on a schedule rather than when someone remembers.
Magnets or metal detection where the process warrants it, with test pieces run and results recorded.
A glass and hard plastic policy: a register of what exists, shatterproof where possible, and a procedure for a breakage.
Optical or manual sorting for agricultural raw material, and a record of what was removed.
Pest control with monitoring records rather than a contract on a wall.
What to check yourself.
Look up. Lights, ceilings, pipes and condensation above open product tell you more than any document.
Ask to see the sieve check records and the metal detector test log for the past month. Gaps are the answer.
Look at maintenance in the production area: loose bolts, tape, cable ties and temporary repairs all shed.
Ask what happened the last time something was found, because a plant with no incidents has usually not been looking.
Questions buyers ask.
Does every factory need a metal detector?
It depends on the process and the risk rather than on a rule. What matters is that the plant assessed the hazard and can explain why the controls they have are the right ones.
What if I find something in a delivery?
Photograph it in place, retain it, record the batch code and raise it the same day. The physical object is the evidence and it usually identifies its own source.
Is this a big problem in Indonesian factories?
It varies enormously between plants rather than being a national characteristic. Agricultural raw material brings more foreign bodies than a manufactured input anywhere in the world, so the sorting step is what to look at.
Read next.
What a factory audit can and cannot tell you
An audit is a snapshot of a place on a day. What that establishes, what it cannot reach, and how buyers over-read it.
What to look at on a factory visit
A day at a producer answers questions no document can. What to look for and the three things that tell you most.
Traceability and recalls
If you had to withdraw a batch tomorrow, could you say which one. What to hold before you need it.
Inspecting before it sails
The five moments worth inspecting, what a report has to contain, and the mistake that makes an inspection worthless.
Sourcing from Indonesia?
Tell us the product, the quantity and the destination. We come back with what it involves before anyone talks about money.