Safety before quality and volume
Jewellery off, PPE on. The Intersafe Executive Team was welcomed professionally at Lamb Weston by Facility manager Jos Custers. For us they are one of the leading suppliers of our fast-food chains, now who can resist French fries?
Lamb Weston started in the early fifties last century in the United States to produce French fries in an industrial way. In 1994 he set up a joint venture with the Meijer Frozen Goods potato company, a family business started by the Meijer family back in 1920. Currently Lamb Weston processes 2 million kilos of potatoes on a daily basis into 1 million kilos of product! In this process you will come up against many safety situations.
Safety and food
During the tour, the members discovered that not only were they walking around cloaked in blue to protect themselves, but at Lamb Weston it is also about product safety and that of the environment in which it is being processed. “If we supplement Intersafe’s mission with 2 of our aspects, it will match Lamb Weston’s needs perfectly”, according to Jos Custers.
Those shared mission would look like: Committed to provide our customers with our solutions and expertise, to continuously improve safety and food safety and the welfare of the employees and customers.
End-users in the food industry, such as fast-food chains, place stringent requirements on the production process. From potatoes to fries, as many risks as possible must be eliminated. Lamb Weston complies with a number of ISO standards such as ISO 9001, 22000 and 14001 and several customer- and industry- specific food safety requirements like BRS and IFS. Intersafe contributes an important part to the provision of PPE of Lamb Weston.
Safety awareness
“It is clearly recognisable that 95% of accidents are caused by behaviour” confirms Yves Pétin, CEO at Intersafe. Lamb Weston is therefore addressing safety behaviour with the introduction of the ‘Behaviour-based safety programme’. Every employee is responsible for his or her own safety and the safety of his or her colleagues.
Of course the production of fries is very important for Lamb Weston, but the safety of its employees has the highest priority and is more important than the production of many tons.
Every morning starts by discussing the safety issues, before addressing quality and production. In addition to this, also the management team goes regularly on rounds in which they observe and, where necessary, tackling employees openly and positively. By creating a culture of approachability on awareness, employees are also given the opportunity to strengthen the safety culture among themselves.
Do you want to discuss safe working with the Intersafe Executive Team?
Because of the visit of the Intersafe Executive Team to Lamb Weston, both Lamb Weston and Intersafe could share their experiences and learned from them. That is how the safety culture for all employees improved again and innovative solutions are being developed in order constantly to improve employees’ safety and welfare at work.
Are you interested in discussing your safety and welfare at work of your employees with Intersafe? Please invite the Intersafe Executive Team to your site and contact us.
