Craig Bacon, Ph.D. – Senior Vice President of Technical Services, Simmons Foods
Watch this video to hear everything Craig had to say about working with FlexXray!
As a top 15 poultry producer in the United States, the largest supplier of store brand wet pet food in North America, and a developer of proprietary animal nutrition products, Simmons Foods handles massive amounts of product each day. Craig Bacon, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Technical Services, leads the FSQA charge at their locations across the country.
Craig spoke to us about Simmons’ experience with foreign material contamination and partnering with FlexXray to address incidents.
“I think foreign material is always a challenge because once you’ve identified that you potentially have foreign material, you need to understand: ‘How much am I talking about? What’s my exposure?’ What’s great about FlexXray is you begin to identify what the bookends are. It started here and it ended here, and here’s how much exposure I had for the product involved.”
Simmons is not the first company Craig has worked at that uses FlexXray.
“I’ve been in this industry for 35 years, first with a previous protein supplier that used FlexXray. When I got to Simmons, they too used FlexXray — a lot of us, quite frankly, do in the poultry industry. So, we had a long history and knowledge of their capabilities and the benefits of using the service.”
They’ve worked with FlexXray enough to have the process down to a science. Once foreign material of interest is identified, they send us a sample. If we’re able to find it—and we usually are—we work out the logistics to inspect the rest of their product hold. After inspection, they use the detailed reports to determine what product is suitable for commerce.
Why not just do this in-house? Craig said:
“The process as it’s done today by FlexXray is much slower and more methodical than our process. It can detect much smaller materials than we could in our inline high-speed processes. And so the level of confidence you have when FlexXray has looked at product(s) that you’ve found all the foreign material is really high.”
He also mentioned the confidence that comes with having a dedicated team of trained personnel identifying the foreign material, rather than only a machine. Coupled with slow speeds, our highly trained team sets FlexXray’s service apart.
“Remember, when I have a production line, I have customers, I have volumes of products that I’m trying to produce on that product. I would never, ever want to slow it down to those kinds of speeds and then continue to manufacture products.”
Simmons has customers in 50 states and 40 countries. Their well being is always at top of mind for Craig and the team.
“Any time we’re working with products, the customer ultimately is kind of our voice. I never want to add any kind of risk to consumers. We’re meeting their obligations in terms of foreign material. So, it’s always a joint conversation when we’re involved in any kind of foreign material opportunity. Plus, from a sustainability standpoint, it’s the right thing to do.”
Apart from the quality and convenience of our inspection services, Craig mentioned our willingness to collaborate and our customer-centric approach.
“FlexXray has always been very, very customer-focused. There’s always good collaboration, from the time we’ve talked about a potential foreign material incident that we might involve them with all the way through to the finished product and when the trucks are going to be delivered back into our distribution centers. There’s a whole bunch of communication and collaboration that has to happen, and that always happens at a really high level within the organization.”