The dairy industry is an essential sector that bridges agricultural production and food manufacturing, delivering nutrition worldwide. As such, dairy producers must comply with a myriad of regulatory requirements such as food safety, farming operations, environmental protection, labor laws, and more. Continuously adhering to complex, evolving regulations involves strategic foresight, durable management, and innovative problem solving, including adoption of technologies like farm automation to streamline operations and ensure compliance. As concerns grow over food safety, product traceability, environmental impact, labor issues and labeling, dairy companies must act. They should be proactive about keeping up with regulations. Compliance issues are not only stumbling blocks for the firms; they are also a way to improve their accountability, confidence and leadership in the market.
Alithya’s Dairy 365, a set of solutions including a highly integrated ERP platform tailored specifically for the industry, enables dairy businesses to address these compliance issues, including those related to farming regulations. Since compliance is a continuous function of business, we can help make it easier for dairy businesses to meet the regulatory needs in an efficient way without compromising productivity and quality. This article will analyze the main barriers in compliance faced by the dairy sector and devise the ways in which such barriers can be overcome which allows for long term stable progress.
6 compliance challenges in the dairy industry
The compliance regime within the dairy sector is complex in nature as it encompasses product traceability, food safety, environmental standards, labor standards, and international trade compliance as well. With so many policies, each requirement is bound to be met by a region and there can be changes over time, making it indispensable for any compliance framework.
Here are some of the key compliance challenges dairy companies face today:
1. Traceability and transparency
Legally, dairy businesses are required to document full traceability of the dairy supply chain not only during raw materials and ingredients procurement but also during the process of manufacturing, packaging, and distribution of finished goods. The main purpose of traceability is to ensure that, when quality or safety issues arise, dairy producers can uncover failed processes and quickly identify all unsafe food products that should be recalled to protect consumers.
2. Food safety standards and hazard analysis
Food safety is critical to dairy products, which are highly perishable and at risk of pollution from handling and other factors. There are a variety of ways to ensure dairy plant compliance in the US, including Dairy Grade A Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP). This science-based system utilizes current National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Food (NACMCF) consistent with current FDA recommendations. Dairy manufacturers that operate internationally must also comply with worldwide standards such as ISO 22000 for adequate food safety measures.
3. Labeling compliance
For companies to avoid legal problems with the regulatory authorities and ensure product transparency for consumers, there is a need for proper labelling of all products. In the dairy industry, dairy product labels must indicate the ingredients, nutritional information, allergies, and the expiry date of the product, among other information. The issue becomes even more complicated for multinational companies since worldwide labels have different regulations.
4. Environmental compliance and sustainability strategies
Dairy companies should monitor and minimize their carbon footprints in response to growing consumer and regulatory demand. This includes responsible handling of emissions, waste, energy, and water to fulfill Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) obligations.
5. Labor and employment compliance
Compliance issues can be further complicated by the wide variety of workers often employed by dairy manufacturers. Organizations must adhere to health and safety requirements along with labor laws pertaining to fair pay, gender and other forms of discrimination.
6. Dealing with changes in the dairy regulatory framework
Regulatory parameters governing the dairy industry are ever-changing on account of changing consumer preferences, emerging scientific evidence and policy changes. Continuous change makes it necessary for companies to always keep abreast of developments and change their operations as necessary - often in little time.
Strategies to overcome dairy compliance challenges
Considering the compliance challenges facing the dairy sector, it is imperative that these companies develop a risk-based, systematic way of managing regulations.
Below are strategies that can help overcome these challenges:
Implement comprehensive data tracking for traceability
End-to-end data tracking ensures every product component can be traced back to its source. By implementing advanced data tracking solutions and monitoring every stage of the production, dairy companies can achieve complete traceability. This feature is important in meeting regulatory requirements and maintaining consumer confidence, especially in the case of a product recall.
Automate HACCP management and food safety protocols
Automating HACCP management assists in the uniformity of procedures aimed at food safety, hence limiting possible mistakes by humans. Using electronic food safety protocols and data tracking solutions, records are combined into one place. This saves time when finding documents for compliance and audit readiness.
Standardize and automate labeling
Automation of labeling eliminates the possibility of any of the products manufactured being non-compliant with regulations of different markets. As they implement data standardization technologies, dairy companies will be able to create the proper tags with accurate nutritional values, allergen declarations, and expiration dates to the target markets, thereby eliminating risks related to non-compliant labels.
Practice sustainability and assess environmental footprint
New business and consumer trends put a focus on environmental responsibility. By monitoring emissions, waste and energy usage, dairy producers can identify ways to decrease their carbon footprint. This enhanced visibility assists them in achieving their sustainability objectives and promoting climate-smart dairy farming practices to support environmental conservation and positive public image.
Establish comprehensive labor compliance policies and training system
The implementation of stringent labor compliance policies and periodic training would enable the employees to appreciate the need to adhere to safety and regulatory measures. Deployment of integrated HR management systems allows monitoring of working hours and safety training records, which are critical in coordinating compliance reviews and ensuring the safety of employees.
Be proactive with regulatory surveillance
Dairy organizations can avoid a frantic rush to meet new regulations with proper planning and infrastructure. Adopting regulatory mechanisms and adaptable technology facilitates real-time monitoring of changes – helping dairy plants stay compliant without disrupting daily operations.
How Alithya’s Dairy 365 and ERP solutions support compliance
Alithya offers a suite of solutions that embed compliance into the overall digital transformation process for dairy manufacturers. Having access to Alithya’s Dairy 365 industry-focused features combined with advanced analytics and change management, allows companies to create more compliant business practices, streamline operations, and be better positioned to grow sustainably.
Here’s how Alithya assists the dairy sector in solving some of the compliance problems:
Full traceability and visibility powered by Dairy 365
Alithya's Dairy 365 solution can track data so that it allows dairy companies to track all the relevant activities of the supply chain. Complete traceability is also necessary for regulatory compliance with the likes of FDA's Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) and offers complete transparency on how products are manufactured and distributed. The batch tracking and recall management capabilities of Dairy 365 further streamline the traceability process and assist businesses in rapidly responding to contamination and quality problems.
Automated HACCP and document management
Dairy 365 offers the simplification of essential food safety activities such as management of HACCP, which helps reduce the manual effort for staff, as well as the likelihood of human errors. As a result of this automation, food safe documents are always updated, protected, and can be retrieved without a struggle during inspections. Dairy 365 ensures that management of documents is done in a uniform manner across various sites, hence improving compliance audits and enabling companies to easily prove their compliance with HACCP, ISO 22000 and other compliance requirements.
ERP solutions for streamlined operations and compliance
Alithya’s ERP solutions have compliance-enabling capabilities that are seamlessly implemented with Dairy 365. By standardizing processes between manufacturing, stock control and financials, the operations of monitoring and recording for compliance purposes are simplified. Furthermore, the data integration functions of ERP enable dairy companies to have a single perspective of their operations and proactively manage risks of compliance breaches. For example, ERP may facilitate the reconciliation of label management in various locations to ensure that regulatory information is presented consistently within a region.
Assistance on global labeling and compliance with Dairy 365 and integration of ERP Systems
The automated labeling solution provided by Dairy 365, coupled with the ERP connection, enables dairy firms to properly meet the labeling standards of each region. In real time, Dairy 365 integrates production information to ensure labels are current and accurate. By combining Dairy 365 with ERP systems, companies gain an integrated strategy for managing inventory and labels, which simplifies and streamlines the process of compliance and minimizes the chances of label misplacement, errors and inaccuracies.
Environmental monitoring and sustainability tracking
Alithya’s Dairy 365 has the capacity to implement environmental monitoring features that allow dairy businesses to track emissions, waste, and resources. This feature helps dairy businesses meet sustainability and ESG objectives while providing insight into environmental performance and the identification of improvement opportunities. Also, Alithya’s Digital Twin technology allows dairy companies to evaluate the possibilities of different production modalities and examine the impacts on resources, emissions, and waste without carrying out the changes.
Labor compliance and safety tracking
Dairy 365 collaborates with HR Tools to track worker adherence to labor laws such as health and safety, working hours or wage. Dairy 365 brings together training records, certifications, time accountability and helps a company resolve basic employment compliance requirements.
Digital transformation to meet evolving industry regulations
Alithya helps dairy plants become more agile in responding to new regulations by equipping them with modern, scalable tools. Thanks to strong BI, advanced analytics, and ERP-integrated processes dairy corporations keep track of and manage all compliance requirements. The combined efficiency of Dairy 365's adaptable infrastructure and the integrated structure of ERP systems enables companies to swiftly and efficiently change processes, modify labels, and amend compliance papers with minimal interruptions to day-to-day business activities.
Empowering dairy companies with Alithya’s digital transformation and ERP solutions
Through their comprehensive offerings, Alithya has made it possible for the dairy industry to achieve ongoing compliance and social and environmental responsibility.
Dairy 365 focuses on transparency, consumer products’ safety, and operational efficiency; while ERP systems excel in managing workflows, sharing data, and tracking compliance activities. With these robust capabilities, dairy plants will not only be able to improve their compliance practices, but they can also gain new operational skills that will position themselves for future growth.
By integrating sustainable practices into compliance processes, dairy companies can also minimize their environmental footprint. Robust ESG strategies not only contribute to a greener and more efficient industry but also ensure it remains relevant to future generations of consumers that demand climate-friendly practices.
In addition, Alithya sees to it that the digital tools promoted are embraced by employees of the dairy companies through its change management and training services. With the digital transformation, which is long-term in nature, the dairy companies can move from a passive strategy towards a more aggressive compliance strategy that gives them an upper hand in the industry.
Overall, Alithya technologies allow dairy companies to address compliance threats and environmental protections. With appropriate resources dairy business can improve their compliance, transparency and efficiency and remain viable in this dynamic industry. Contact our dairy industry experts today to streamline your plant’s compliance activities and optimize operations for sustainable success.