SQT Blog

You may have seen the article on Padraic O Maille in yesterday’s Irish Times Health Supplement.  I would highly recommend the book he wrote to anyone in any walk of life.  It is a wonderful story well told, intertwined with great advice and tips that will help you through the tougher days in life and in business.  I guarantee it will make you think and live differently.

If you only read one book this summer – let this be the one.  Highly Recommended.

 

We have spent the last ten years refining our HACCP systems and now retailers are requiring TACCP (Threat Analysis Critical Control Point) and VACCP (Vulnerability Analysis Critical Control Point).  Do threats and vulnerabilities have to be dealt with through a separate management system or can they be incorporated into our existing HACCP?

The key to making HACCP a management system that production, engineering, supply chain and not just technical understood was to make it logical, logic works in the Food Industry.  Central to this logical approach was the need “to control reasonable hazards”.  Unfortunately when it comes to TACCP /VACCP “reasonable” is a word that is rarely used.  Threats to business usually originate from “unreasonable” people or organisations but unfortunately this is the world we live in when it comes to supply chain management.

The first step for any Technical Manager is to source a guidance standard which will offer some advice.  PAS 96:2014 is such a starting point and when Tesco, McDonalds, J. Sainsbury, Hilton Food Group, Heineken and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) contribute to such a document it carries significant weight.

Personally I believe that TACCP is an unfortunate term as it implies that there will be CCPs in the same way that HACCP does.  This will not be the case as all the threats and vulnerabilities will be controlled by an FBOs pre-requisite programme.

Author: Denis Kiely

Learn more about TACCP on our 1 day training course – more

Many people start every year with great dreams and goals only to end the year with many of them unfulfilled and great plans that never got off the page.

The reason is simple – the achievement of goals requires one thing above all others, Smácht. It’s the Irish word for discipline. You need the Smácht to define your goal and you need someone to keep you accountable to achieving it – little by little, week by week.

This is why Pádraic Ó Máille set up Smácht, a network for business people all over Ireland with one thing in common, they want to put Smácht on their goals and make things really happen in their business and their life for the better.

Smácht Mór was recently held in Galway attended by over 200 business people from every walk of life. It was a day packed with ideas, tips, stories and life lessons from seven inspirational speakers; Pádraic, Tom Murray, Bobby Kerr, Joan Mulvihill, Annette Houston, Anne Tobin and John Concannon

When you have a day that starts with a session on “Put Yourself in Danger of Getting Business” you know you better stay focused!!!

The overall theme for the day was ‘Direction’ and the purpose was to inspire delegates to review the direction of their business, career and life. Padraic reminded us that by changing the angle of a golf club by as little as one millimetre, can make the difference between a hole in one and ending up in the rough. The same is true in life. Small changes, applied consistently over time, can make a massive difference in the results each of us will achieve in the future. But only if we actually begin those changes now. Apply Smácht.

Here is just a small flavour of the pick-ups from the day;

• Set realistic goals, keep them short and simple (although there was another point of view in the room that suggests goals should be big and “scary”!!!).
• Record your victories.
• Learn from your mistakes and move on fast.
• Innovate constantly – there is always a better way and savings to be made.
• Surround yourself with positive people.
• Integrity is what people will remember – don’t do anything you will regret.
• People buy from people, not companies.
• Without deals, a business will not grow. Deal making is the art of letting other people have your way.
• To succeed in sales, you need to ask the right questions.
• Resolve this year to live like a Buffalo charging head on into your worries and fears – thereby minimising your exposure to adversity.
• And finally….Be remembered as an example, not a warning.

Lots of food for thought…

If you would like to learn more about Smácht go to http://omaille.ie/2015/02/the-smacht-edge/

Regards

Siobhan